


And the Stars Shone...

by DanaFox1013



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Attempted Sexual Assault, Coercion, Conspiracy, Dana Scully Angst, Dialogue Heavy, Dubious Consent, Execution, F/M, Fox Mulder Angst, Government Conspiracy, Heavy Angst, Implied Fox Mulder/Dana Scully, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Torture, Murder, Mytharc (X-Files), Operas, Rape/Non-con Elements, Suicide, Syndicate (X-Files)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:34:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29471784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanaFox1013/pseuds/DanaFox1013
Summary: This is an X-Files universe retelling of the opera Tosca and comes with all the violence and tragedy you would expect from an opera. Do not read if you like happy endings!TW: Attempted dubcon/coercion, suicide.
Relationships: Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	1. Act One

**J. Edgar Hoover Building  
5.47 pm**

Assistant Director Walter Skinner wandered slowly around the basement office that belonged to Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. The office was in its usual state of disarray. Piles of paper threatened to overflow onto the floor from every flat surface, folders stuck out of overfilled filing cabinets, and not an inch of the walls was free from newspaper clippings, yellowing documents, or old posters. Only one area of the room was clean and neatly organized; the area surrounding Agent Scully’s desk. Skinner made his way over and sat down in the old leather chair that creaked slightly under his weight. It was Friday night so the desk was mostly clear, holding only Scully’s computer, an open file she must have been recently reading, and a small collection of framed photographs that showed her family and Mulder. The green light on her monitor signaled that the computer was simply sleeping, not yet fully switched off, so she must have not yet left for the evening. Skinner wasn't sure where his agents were but he hoped that Mulder at least would hurry up and return to the office. 

A ding outside the door indicated the arrival of the elevator and Skinner heard the heavy footfalls of a man making their way up the corridor. Mulder appeared in the doorway and halted, regarding Skinner for a brief moment.

“Jeez Scully, you really need to start using a better face cream,” he deadpanned, “you’re looking terrible this afternoon.” Skinner snorted in amused annoyance.

“Sit down Mulder,” he commanded, rising from Scully’s chair and crossing the office to perch on the corner of Mulder’s desk, carefully locating the only few square inches of it that were clear. Mulder flopped down into his chair and rested his ankles up on the desk casually, regarding Skinner with a face that screamed innocence so loudly that Skinner knew he was hiding something.

“What can I help you with this afternoon, Sir?” Mulder asked helpfully.

“What do you know about a break-in last night at the Pentagon?” Skinner asked, refusing to beat about the bush.

“I haven’t heard about anything like that, Sir,” Mulder replied immediately, “should I have?” Skinner narrowed his eyes.

“A group of men broke in and hacked a computer on a secure network that can only be used within the building. A number of high-security files were accessed and downloaded, each of them contained information that could be damaging to the United States and its allies if they were to fall into the wrong hands.” 

Skinner watched Mulder as he spoke, but the younger man showed no sign of anything beyond his neutral expression so Skinner continued on flatly. “A security guard lost his life attempting to detain the suspects.” 

As he watched, Skinner saw a flicker of worry cross Mulder’s face at that last sentence. Before he could be sure of what he had seen the expression was gone, replaced by more carefully styled neutrality. “I have been faxed descriptions of the suspects and they match a group of your associates,” Skinner added slowly.

“I’m sorry to hear that Sir,” Mulder began slowly, “I’m sure the Pentagon will investigate the matter thoroughly but I don’t see how it pertains to the FBI. The Pentagon is a military base and such an incident is clearly under the jurisdiction of the military.”

“Cut the sanctimonious crap Mulder,” Skinner hissed, grabbing the monitor on the desk, spinning it, and switching it on in one single move that secretly impressed both men although neither would admit it. The screen booted up to show a number of scanned documents. “I know for a fact that you’ve been investigating the colonel who was involved in incidents described in the stolen files.”

“Colonel Henriksen was a potential witness in a case I’m investigating with Agent Scully,” Mulder replied smoothly, “if he also happens to be involved with the incident at the Pentagon last night then that must be a coincidence.”

“Coincidence my ass,” Skinner barked, “you’re treading in dangerous waters with this one Mulder. The security guard who was killed wasn’t just your average Joe looking to play crime fighter for minimum wage. The papers that came across my desk this morning suggest he had ties to several organizations you and I have both clashed with in the past. Our smoking friend has his yellowing fingers in many of them. If you know something about this I suggest you tell me now and keep your nose clean from now on.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know anything more than I’ve already told you, Sir,” Mulder replied. The two men stared at each other, Mulder maintaining his usual irritating coolness as Skinner felt the vein above his left eye pulsing and a headache beginning to build.

“Stay away from this Mulder,” he warned, rising from the desk, “you don’t know what you’re up against.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind, Sir,” Mulder answered pleasantly. Skinner’s head twitched in a nod and he stormed out of the room, finding a packet of Tylenol now at the top of his immediate to-do list.

Mulder watched his boss’s back disappear around the corner and waited for the sequence of noises that meant the arrival of the elevator before letting out a long breath, closing his eyes, and tipping his head back against the chair. He let his arms droop to his sides and looked up at the array of pencils poking out of the ceiling. Hearing footsteps outside the office door he quickly pulled himself back upright, expecting to come face to face with Skinner again. Instead, he found himself looking at three disheveled male faces.

“Is he gone?” Langly asked.

“Yeah, I think I gave him a headache, it wouldn't be the first time,” Mulder mused, watching the three men scurry into the room and close the door behind them. “What in hell have you three gotten yourselves into? What’s this about a dead security guard?” The Gunmen looked at one another sheepishly.

“You know we told you about the encrypted file we were sent a few days ago?” Byers began. Mulder nodded. “Langly decrypted part of it that seemed to refer to several files describing experiments conducted during the Operation Desert Storm. Files that suggested that the Gulf War Syndrome experienced by many returning soldiers was actually a side-effect of vaccine trials conducted by the U.S. government on soldiers posted in the Gulf. Most of the documents had been redacted but a reference code told us that the original files were stored inside the Pentagon so last night we broke in to try and retrieve copies. There's a super-secure network only accessible by a group of computers deep inside the building with no external connections. We managed to get inside and Langly hacked into one of the machines but breaching the security triggered an alert. We downloaded the files onto a tape and ran for it. The security guys almost had us but one of them took a shot and missed. The bullet must have ricocheted or something because the next second he screamed and fell twelves stories straight down a stairwell.” 

All four men winced at the thought.

“Whatever happened, it bought us the extra seconds we needed to get out of there,” Langly added quietly. 

“Do you have the tape?” Mulder asked. Frohike reached inside his vest and withdrew the DAT. Mulder held out his hand and took it, inserting it into the reader attached to his computer and downloading the files. For some time, all four men silently read the documents. Mulder finished first and leaned back in his chair, mouth slightly agape as he digested the information. 

“Do you three have any idea what you’ve stumbled across?” he asked. The Gunmen looked at each other nervously. “This is it. This is the proof we’ve been looking for. Proof that our government has been secretly experimenting on innocent people with this virus, infecting innocent soldiers in order to test their vaccine and continue work on developing their alien-human hybrid. It’s all signed and sealed and delivered with an official stamp. Oh yes!” He stood up and began striding across the room. “We can finally make this thing public!”

“I’m all for that Mulder,” Frohike cut in, “but right now your cigarette smoking friend is coming after us, and considering we’re responsible for the death…”

“Accidental death,” Byers added quickly.

“Indirectly responsible for the accidental death of one of his colleagues," Frohike conceded, "I doubt he’ll just want a chat over coffee if he manages to find us.” Mulder stopped pacing and looked at the guys. Where normally they had a tendency to look assured of themselves, even downright cocky at times, at that moment they looked nothing more than tired and afraid. He couldn’t blame them.

“Yeah…” he agreed. “Don’t worry boys, I’ll figure something out.” As they stood in silence, the ding of the elevator made the three men bolt upright from their seats, panic etched across all their faces.

“Crap!” Frohike spat.

“Over here,” Mulder whispered, indicating a darkened corner of the office he used for storage. There was a small amount of space hidden behind a pile of boxes. The Gunmen raced past him and concealed themselves in the shadows as Mulder returned to his desk, trying to arrange his features into the same casual, innocent expression that he had used on Skinner. The click of heels in the corridor outside the office alerted him that he wasn’t about to receive a visit from his worst enemy. Scully appeared around the door and stopped, studying him with a suspicious expression. Mulder had the feeling that he was being scanned. 

“Mulder?” she asked slowly.

“What’s up, Scully?”

“I just came from Skinner’s office,” she explained as she entered the office and closed the door behind her. “I was dragged into a meeting up there headed by Cassidy with several other ADs and a dozen agents from counter-terrorism. Mulder have you heard from the three stooges lately?”

“The boys?” Mulder questioned, trying to keep the pitch of his voice from rising too much. Scully was a damned good investigator and she would sense him hiding something from her instantly if he wasn’t careful. “No, I’ve not seen them in a few weeks. Why?”

“By the sounds of it, they’ve got themselves caught up in something bad,” Scully explained, perching on Mulder’s desk at such an angle that her skirt drew its way up her leg. Mulder’s eyes wandered down toward it and Scully followed them. Sighing she brushed her hand down her leg, pulling the material back down toward her knee. “Not now,” she admonished, “maybe tonight if we can get this mess straightened up?”

“Dana Scully you are such a tease,” Mulder smiled at her. She smiled back for a moment. 

“Mulder this is serious,” she carried on, wiping the smile from her face.

“Oh come on Scully, how much trouble could those three possibly stir up?”

“Mulder they broke into the Pentagon!”

“So? It wouldn’t be the first time, would it? In fact, I seem to recall that the last time that exact same set of events happened, you were with them.”

“That was different,” Scully hissed, “that time it was a rescue mission, not breaking and entering into a government building for kicks. Look, Mulder, a man is dead because of them.”

“Yeah, Skinner said,” Mulder muttered.

“Then you know how bad this looks,” Scully sighed.

“Yes, but it was accidental wasn't it?”

“The man took a bullet to the shoulder and plunged down twelves stories of fire escape onto a concrete floor. Doesn’t sound all that accidental to me.”

“Are you suggesting that one of the Gunmen shot him?” Mulder shot back incredulously, “Honestly can you imagine any of them firing a gun at someone? Langly would practically wet himself just holding a gun, Byers could never bring himself to pull the trigger and neither could Frohike. You know that.”

“I know that people can surprise you, and surprise themselves too with the things they find themselves capable of when the situation calls for it. You’ve heard of mothers lifting full-sized cars off their children after accidents. It’s well documented.”

“I think a parent suddenly finding themself capable of an incredible feat of strength to rescue their injured child is a little bit different to a group of very timid men suddenly becoming cold-blooded killers don’t you?” Scully just stared at him and he stared back.

“I don’t want to imagine it,” Scully finally replied, “but at the same time Mulder the evidence is there. Considering what they stole, the penalties of being caught would be extreme, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were scared. Very scared, and fear can bring out the worst in all of us.” She paused for a few moments. “Did Skinner tell you what was stolen last night?”

“Just some documents that could ‘be potentially damaging to the United States and its allies’” Mulder told her in a bad imitation of Skinner which made Scully smirk.

“He didn’t say exactly what those files were?”

“No.”

“They were files containing blueprints for a new weapon being developed by the military. The people in charge of the investigation think that whoever stole those files intends to sell them. The plans are almost complete, they would be worth a fortune to whoever had them. Russia, Iran, North Korea - they would pay a lot to get hold of those plans, Mulder.”

“The Gunmen would never sell national secrets, Scully, they’re not in it for the money.”

“I know that but we both know how much they’ve been struggling financially lately, they could use a boost and this would be enough to finance that paper of theirs with a full staff for longer than any of us will live.”

“No, Scully!” Mulder snapped, slamming his hand down on the desk and making her jump. “I know you haven’t always liked the guys but,” Scully started to say something but he cut her off, “no, let me finish. These people are my friends Scully. I’ve known them for years. They would never sell information that would put the country or its citizens at risk. They're patriots.”

“OK I believe you,” Scully replied in a small voice, “but if that’s true then we need to clear their names. We need to find them and find these documents and figure out what’s going on here. The boys must have had a reason for breaking in last night and stealing these files. Let’s figure out what it is.” Mulder pursed his lips and nodded. 

“I agree,” he began, trying to figure out how best to get her to leave, “but I also think it’s getting kind of late and it’s Friday night. I think you should go home and get some rest and then we can really dig into this in the morning.” Scully’s brow furrowed and her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Mulder?”

“What? I’m just saying that I’m tired and I know you were up early so if we really want to help the guys we should probably do that after a good night’s rest.” 

“Mulder I need you to tell me something.”

“Of course.”

“Promise me something.”

“That’s a little trickier.”

“Mulder, please. Please promise me you’re not involved in this,” Scully’s eyes glinted slightly and Mulder suddenly realized that they were beginning to water. “You’re already at the top of the most wanted list for these people. Getting involved in something like this would be enough justification for them to get rid of you once and for all. I can’t go through that again Mulder. Especially not now.” 

“Hey,” Mulder admonished gently, taking her hands in his and using the other to brush away a tear that threatened to roll down her cheek. “I’m gonna be fine OK? We’ll go home, figure out a plan of action and we’ll get right on it first thing in the morning. I’m gonna go home and make a list of all the places they could be hiding out and then tomorrow we’ll set about clearing their names, OK?” 

Scully swallowed hard.

“OK,” she whispered. Mulder stood up and leaned in, brushing his lips across hers. 

“Go home,” he whispered gently into her ear, making her shudder a little. “I’ll call you later and say goodnight.” He pulled her slightly, raising her to her feet.

“You better,” she smiled back. She shifted her weight nervously between her feet for a brief moment. “I love you.”

“I know,” Mulder grinned in his best Han Solo impression, earning him a half sneer from Scully in return. He pushed her slightly toward the door. “Now go on, I expect to hear you’ve been relaxing with a nice bubble bath when I call later.”

“That’s only so you can picture me naked and wet,” Scully growled slightly as she made her way to the door. Mulder was sure he heard a slight choking noise from the shadows behind him.

“You wound me with your accusations,” he pouted.

“Only because they’re true,” Scully grinned. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” Mulder smiled, watching her go and waiting for the elevator to disappear upwards before letting out the breath the felt he had been holding the entire time she was in the office. He quickly stepped to the door and checked the corridor to make sure it was completely empty before turning back. “Coast is clear,” he said into the room. The boys extracted themselves from the corner and dusted themselves off.

“You never said you and Scully were together,” Frohike said accusingly. Mulder shrugged.

“It’s a fairly recent development.”

“Still, you could have shared the news with the rest of the class, save some of us from false hope,” Frohike muttered.

“Sorry buddy,” Mulder grinned. “listen, I’ve been thinking. Do you boys need a place to hide out until Scully and I can calm the situation down?”

“We’ve been trying to think of something but we’re coming up empty,” Byers replied. “Do you have somewhere in mind?”

“There’s an old room under my apartment building, never used. I saw inside it once, it’s pretty small but there’s room enough for the three of you.” The Gunmen looked at each other and nodded.

“If you’re sure it’s safe,” Byers added.

“As safe as anywhere for you boys now. Listen though, I need you to answer something. Those files on the DAT were the only ones you took right? This stuff about blueprints is all hogwash?”

“Of course, Frohike answered, “the weapon they’re referring to has to be the virus. They can’t very well go referring to the alien virus files in conversation can they, it makes sense that it would be all hidden away under the disguise of a secret weapon.” Mulder nodded.

“You know it’s all lies?” Byers asked, “you know we’d never consider selling secrets. That we just want to get this information out into the public eye?”

“Of course,” Mulder agreed. “Look, this place isn’t safe for you. Let’s get you hidden.”

“Fine by us,” Langly agreed. 

“We’ll head out the way we came,” Byers added.

“Meet me in the parking lot,” Mulder added, “I’ll be five minutes.” 

The boys left and Mulder strode back to his computer. He switched off his machine and did the same to Scully’s which she had forgotten to close down, then he retrieved the DAT tape from the reader and hastily shoved it into his jacket pocket. He flicked off all the lights and locked the office door behind him. As he made his way down the corridor he heard the elevator whir into life and saw the display indicate that the car was heading down to the basement. Quickly he spun on his feet and hurried for the stairs, vanishing through the fire door before the elevator doors had a chance to open. In his haste, he didn’t hear the faint clatter as the DAT tape fell from his pocket and hit the concrete floor right outside the office door.

\---

**J. Edgar Hoover Building  
7.03 pm**

Skinner hurried down the corridor outside the basement office once again. It was getting late and most of the agents in the building had already left for home, ready to get started on their weekend plans and spend time with their families. Skinner knew that both Mulder and Scully usually worked late, even on Fridays, and so he hoped to catch Mulder before he left for the evening. The glow of light from under the office door gave him hope that he had not arrived too late, but when he pushed the door open, he was met with a cloud of choking smoke instead.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” he demanded toward the shadowy figure that sat comfortably in Mulder’s chair looking completely at ease in his surroundings.

“It’s remarkable how quickly Agent Mulder has rebuilt his empire,” Spender commented casually, looking around the room. “The last time I saw this room it was nothing more than ash.”

“And I’m sure you’d know nothing about that incident,” Skinner bit back, “considering it remains an open investigation.”

“Of course not,” Spender replied with a polite smile. Skinner swallowed back the bile which threatened to creep up his throat.

“So other than admiring the furnishings, what are you doing in this office?” Skinner asked again, “I hadn’t heard that you’d been recruited to the X-Files.”

“Looking for the same thing you are I imagine,” Spender answered, “it seems our quarry has eluded us both for the evening.”

“So you figured you’d just wait around and see if he showed up?” Skinner asked.

“He or any of his companions; Mulder keeps some interesting company.”

“I’m perfectly aware of the company Agent Mulder chooses to keep, and also of the company he chooses to avoid,” Skinner replied coolly. 

“Then I’m sure you will have heard about last night’s unfortunate incident at the Pentagon?”

“Yes. The Bureau is currently conducting an investigation into those events in conjunction with the military.”

“Is Agent Mulder involved in that investigation?”

“Agent Mulder is currently assigned to the X-Files. As the investigation is being handled by Counter-Terrorism and it does not currently require any additional manpower, Agent Mulder would have no reason to be involved.”

“But you have spoken to him on the matter?” Spender pressed, unwilling to relent.

“I spoke to Agent Mulder briefly on the subject,” Skinner admitted, “he assured me he had no insight into the events.”

“And you believed him?”

“He gave me no reason not to,” Skinner answered. The two men stared at one another for a few moments.

“I have information that the suspects from last night’s incident were sighted inside this building this afternoon,” Spender announced.

“If that’s true then I’m sure our security footage will bear that out,” Skinner replied.

“Do you have any idea why they might have been in the building?” Spender pushed. Skinner chose not to answer so Spender carried on. “I believe these men visited Agent Mulder and shared sensitive information with him. Information that endangers the lives of U.S. citizens.”

“Since when did you care about the lives of the American public?” Skinner snarled.

“I’ve always cared,” Spender replied instantly, looking hurt, “that’s why I‘ve done the things I have.”

“Then I suggest you leave the search in the hands of the security staff in this building. If the men you’re looking for are still here then they will be found.”

“My own agents are conducting a thorough search,” Spender explained, waving his hand as if the matter was of no real importance. “however I’m sure they will find nothing.”

“So you’re still here because?” The elevator dinged again and Skinner heard the sharp clack of heels.

“Mulder I…” Scully began as she appeared in the doorway, silencing herself instantly at the sight of the two men before her. Her eyes narrowed as she caught sight of Spender and inhaled the reek of smoke. “Sir?”

“Agent Scully, what are you doing here so late?” Skinner asked in concern. “I thought you left some time ago.”

“I er, I forgot to switch off my workstation,” she explained, slowly making her way into the room toward her desk.

“It would seem that Agent Mulder thoughtfully switched off the computer for you,” Spender drawled, taking another deep drag on his cigarette. “Have you seen your partner recently Agent Scully?” She stared at him in stony silence until footsteps were heard outside. Two men in suits appeared in the doorway, completely blocking the exit.

“We’ve completed our sweep of the building Sir,” the first man said, addressing Spender, “there’s no sign of the suspects. It appears they may have exited through an unmonitored side room and into the parking lot.” Spender nodded slowly before turning back to Scully.

“You’re aware of last night’s incident at the Pentagon Agent Scully?” he asked.

Scully refused to say a word so Spender continued. “Let me refresh your memory. Several files of deep importance to national security and the safety of the American public were stolen by men I believe are associates of your partner. If those files were to appear on the open market they would be of infinite value to our enemies and if Agent Mulder were to be linked to them…”

“Agent Mulder knows nothing about those files,” Scully snapped.

“Are you sure?” Spender asked, raising his eyebrows. “I have evidence to the contrary.” Scully balked and spun around to look at Skinner.

“Sir?” 

“What are you talking about, you black lunged son of a bitch?” Skinner hissed. Spender slowly reached inside his jacket pocket and retrieved the DAT tape, placing it on the desk in front of him.

“I found this tape on the floor of this office when I arrived, it appears that somebody dropped it on their way out; they must have been in quite a hurry to leave behind something of such value. It contains the files downloaded from the Pentagon last night.”

“How do we know you didn’t plant that tape here before any of us arrived?” Skinner accused.

“If you check Agent Mulder’s computer I’m confident it will show that the files on this tape were accessed earlier this afternoon when neither I nor any of my agents here had even left the Pentagon.” Spender sat forward and switched on the monitor of Mulder’s computer. “And of course, there’s this,” he added. 

Scully looked at the screen and saw the files Mulder had prepared on Colonel Henriksen.

“Who is that?” she asked Skinner quietly.

“Colonel Henriksen is the ranking officer at the center of the illegal hacked files,” Skinner told her quietly, “he designed the weapon blueprints that were stolen.”

“Why would Mulder have a profile of him on his computer?” Scully pressed urgently.

“Your guess is as good as mine Agent Scully,” Skinner replied, “but he’d better have a damn good explanation because none of this is looking good.”

“I think you know what the explanation is Miss Scully,” Spender interrupted, “you’ve suspected it yourself but were afraid to admit it. You’re afraid that your feelings are clouding your judgment where Agent Mulder is concerned.”

“Quit with the psycho-analysis crap,” Scully snapped back, “you know nothing about my feelings so stop trying to get inside my head.”

“I know more about your feelings than you’d care to admit,” Spender carried on, “enough to know that you’d do anything for Mulder. Your actions in the past are a testament to that. The only question is, does Agent Mulder return your affections? Would he lie to you?”

“I trust Agent Mulder with my life and he trusts me with his,” Scully snarled, “he would never lie to me.”

“Even if it were to keep you safe? To keep you away from implication in something as damaging, as far-reaching as this? You’ve heard the words before Scully, 'plausible deniability'. Would Agent Mulder’s belief in the truth go so far as to risk implicating the woman he loves in something that could see her end up in prison, or worse?” Scully stared back at him.

“Agent Mulder would never lie to me,” she repeated slowly, willing her expression to remain defiant despite the war that raged inside her mind. Would Mulder really lie to her in order to keep her safe? To keep her innocent of whatever crazy scheme he and his friends had thought up this time? She knew he’d done it before, many times over. That fact screamed its truth inside her head, but the idea of Mulder selling national secrets? It just didn’t fit. Mulder didn’t care about money, he never had before and now after his mother’s death, he had no more need for wealth. This last Christmas had proven that fact several times over. 

But perhaps it wasn't about the money? If Mulder had found something, a weapon he believed would be used against innocent civilians, Scully knew there was little he wouldn’t do to stop that from happening. If that meant giving those blueprints to another nation, to an enemy of the state, so that the government could no longer use it for risk of exposure, well was that really so far-fetched? Mulder’s quest for truth had never fitted well with conventional ideas of reason and rationality. As much as she hated to admit it, it would be just like him to do something like this. As she gradually came around to the sickening idea that perhaps Mulder had done something terrible, something unforgivable, Spender stood up from Mulder’s chair and stretched.

“Well, it would appear that Agent Mulder has truly left for the evening,” he announced, “I see no reason to waste any further time waiting here.” He walked toward the door, lighting another cigarette as he went. When he got there he turned back and surveyed the room. “Nice place you have here Agent Scully, it would be a shame if Agent Mulder were to lose it again.” He turned once more and disappeared, trailed by his two goons. Scully heard the elevator come and go, then collapsed into her chair, massaging her temples as a headache threatened.

“Agent Scully?” Skinner asked, concern lacing his voice.

“Yes Sir?” Scully replied flatly, looking up into his eyes.

“What Spender said,” Skinner asked nervously, “you seemed… uncertain.”

“You know Mulder almost as well as I do,” Scully answered hesitantly, “I suppose I'm concerned that maybe, maybe he could be involved.”

“You think he would sell secrets?” Skinner asked in surprise.

“I don’t know!” she replied, surprising herself at how much of a wail her voice had become, “With Mulder everything is about the truth. Truth with a capital T. He doesn’t always think these things through logically.” 

Skinner let out a heavy sigh and sat down in Mulder’s chair facing her. The seat was still warm from Spender and it made Skinner feel slightly nauseous. 

“Sir?” Scully’s voice broke through, she sounded afraid. He looked up at her and tried to muster as much kindness into his features as possible. Scully had never asked for any of this, after all, she had been assigned to Mulder and his goddamned quest. 

“Go home Scully,” he sighed, “get some rest.” She smiled weakly at him; they both knew such a request was impossible. “That’s an order,” he added with a weak smile of his own.

“Yes Sir,” she replied, rising and making her way to the door. In Skinner’s eyes, she suddenly looked small and infinitely fragile. He hoped he would be able to protect her from whatever fresh hell Mulder had managed to inflict upon the pair of them this time. He knew that one day his capacity for shielding her would fail them both and worried about what that day would ultimately bring. Skinner also knew that Scully had now linked herself with Mulder in so many ways, finally breaking the physical boundary that had remained in place until the last, that extricating her from Mulder’s tangled web was looking nigh on impossible. And of course, that was assuming she would deign to allow herself to be pulled out in the first place. Knowing Scully as he did, Skinner worried that her loyalty, and now her love, would mean she would follow Mulder down any path, even if it led them both right to hell.

“Agent Scully?” Skinner called after her, “I’ll see that you’re not implicated in any of this.” She smiled quickly back at him.

“Thank you Sir, but honestly, it’s not me I’m worried about,” she told him.

“Me neither,” he replied.

\---

**J. Edgar Hoover Building - Parking Lot  
7.37 pm**

Scully trudged through the nearly empty lot to her car which was parked at the far end of the third level. The walk felt long, her feet ached and she was cold. Her coat was lying strewn over the back seat of the car, little use to her here. Another blast of icy wind shot through from the open gates and she shivered, pulling her suit jacket around her a little tighter and picking up her pace. Her mind was racing. She desperately wanted to flush out the niggling seeds of doubt that Spender had placed there, the seeds that were blossoming into a fully-fledged fear that Mulder had done something stupid yet again and that this time the damage was too much for her to fix. She trusted Mulder, she always had, and yet… and yet. Mulder loved her, she knew that, but she didn’t yet know the risks that a Mulder-in-love was liable to take. He had always been impulsive, prone to acting without thinking. Adding volatile emotions to that mixture seemed like a bad combination. 

She yawned and rubbed her eyes. She knew that she should go home but the niggling doubt just wouldn’t go away. Instead, she resolved to drive to Mulder’s apartment and confront him with Spender's evidence. Surely there was a logical explanation for the profile of Colonel Henriksen on his computer? The DAT tape would take a little more explanation but she was sure Mulder would have something, and she would accept it as she always did. Then, maybe, she would be able to sleep without these worries bothering her. Mulder would probably invite her to stay the night and she would probably take him up on the offer. Thinking about it, crawling into bed beside Mulder seemed infinitely preferable to spending another night alone in her own apartment. She could use the reassurance, the feeling of him pressed up against her back, his heart beating steadily beside hers. She finally made it to the car and slid inside, turning the air conditioning up as warm as she could and holding her hands up to the vents, massaging the fingers to kick start her circulation. She turned the engine over and let it idle for a moment, reassuring herself that she was taking the right course of action. Finally, she took hold of the wheel and backed out of her space, heading for the exit and Mulder’s apartment beyond.

\---

“Target moving,” a man relayed into the walkie talkie. 

“Roger that, follow and report,” a voice crackled back. Anthony Spoletta fired up his engine and slowly edged his car forward, following the blue Taurus of Dana Scully out of the Hoover Building parking lot at a discreet distance. As the cars moved away, a small orange light flared in a darkened corner of the parking lot as a match was struck. Spender watched the cars exit the lot as he listened to the faint hiss from the walkie talkie tucked neatly inside his coat pocket. There was no rush. Sooner or later Mulder would trip up and lead him to where he needed to go. For now, patience was the order of the day. He took a deep pull of his cigarette, dropped the match to the ground, and made his way over to his own car. He would go home and he would wait.


	2. Act Two

**The Apartment of CGB Spender  
8.46 am**

Spender sat in his leather recliner holding a glass of good red wine. It had been a long night and he wanted nothing more than to relax a little and truly savor the flavor of the wine, a gift from a psychologist friend with exquisite taste. He knew he needed to get some sleep. It was almost nine in the morning and he still hadn’t been to bed, however, he also knew he would not be able to sleep until his final business of the previous evening had been taken care of. Setting the glass aside he picked up the telephone receiver on the desk beside him and dialed a number he rarely used but which was stored safely in his mind. The phone rang several times before the answering machine picked up, just as he had known it would.

“This is Dana Scully, I’m afraid I’m not available at the moment, please leave a message after the tone and I’ll get back to you.” The machine sounded a single off-key tone then silenced.

“Agent Scully,” Spender began in his usual measured tone, “by the time you hear this message I’m sure you will have heard that I have detained Agent Mulder for questioning in relation to the incident we discussed in his office yesterday evening. The address of my current location has been slipped under your door. I'm sure I can expect to see you here shortly.” 

He replaced the receiver and took another sip of the wine. His friend had been right, it was wonderful. Standing up, he made his way into his bedroom, placing the glass down beside a pile of books. He couldn’t afford a long sleep but he was used to subsisting on small doses, he had to be. 

At this very moment, his men were on their way to Mulder’s apartment to bring him in for questioning. According to his surveillance, Scully had just headed home to freshen up and so he could probably count on an hour’s sleep before he needed to be fresh and alert again. He swallowed the last of the wine, knowing it would help him get to sleep quickly. Not bothering to change, he lay his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes, untroubled by the knowledge of what he might need to do that later that day.

**Office of CGB Spender  
10.13 am**

The door to Spender’s office slammed into the wall as his assistant Spoletta shoved it open with one hand. His other hand held his gun which was pointed beneath his suit jacket at the man beside him. 

“Inside,” he grunted, holding the door open with his foot.

“Seems a shame to stay indoors on such a lovely day,” Mulder replied from beside him, not moving to enter the office. Spoletta cocked the safety on the gun and Mulder looked over at the man. “If you insist." 

He moved ahead into the overtly plush office and looked around. The room had been decorated in dark woods and leather, making it look out of place in the otherwise sleek and modern building. 

“Agent Mulder, so glad you could join us.” Spender’s voice oozed from a high-backed chair that sat beside an oversized desk. 

“And there goes the last of the sunshine,” Mulder commented as Spoletta pushed him to the middle of the room. "Nice desk, are you compensating for something?"

“I’d hoped we could talk like civilized men,” Spender replied, standing up and moving to a sideboard that matched the desk before pouring himself a drink of honey-toned liquor from a cut-glass decanter which sat on it. He looked up at Spoletta, “you may leave us,” he told the younger man. Spoletta nodded once, spun on his heels, and left the room, pulling the door firmly closed behind him. Spender took a sip of the liquid and lifted a second glass from the sideboard, he proffered it to Mulder, “may I offer you a drink”?

“No, thank you,” Mulder answered coolly, "I have a rule never to drink before dinner, or with traitors for that matter."

“Your loss,” Spender replied, returning the decanter and the empty glass to the sideboard before sitting down and taking a small sip from the glass, “it’s an especially good vintage.”

“Is there any chance we could dispense with the faux pleasantries and get on to the real reason I’m here?” Mulder asked, sounding bored, “I have shelves that need dusting.”

“Very well,” Spender answered, placing his glass down on a coaster and drawing himself forward toward the desk. He indicated the vacant chair opposite him in which Mulder seated himself. “I need your help Agent Mulder, in locating three individuals who I know to be friends of yours.” He reached for a manilla folder that sat atop a pile of papers to his left and slid it over, opening it and removing three sheets, one for each of the Gunmen. He placed each one in front of Mulder. “You know these men?”

“I do.”

“Do you know their current whereabouts?”

“If I did I wouldn’t tell you.” The two men stared at each other across the desk and Mulder felt the faux pleasantries of the meeting beginning to melt away as Spender’s anger crept fractionally closer to the surface of his icy cool exterior. 

“It's in your best interests not to lie to me Agent Mulder,” he said quietly, “I have effective means of convincing men to tell me the truth.”

“I’m sure you do,” Mulder replied without looking away. 

“You are aware that these men are involved in a serious crime? That the death of a man appears to be in their hands? That the security of this very nation could be in jeopardy unless they are found?”

“If you say so.”

“Agent Mulder I am a very patient man but even my patience has its limits,” Spender told him, a hint of a threat in his voice.

“I’m sure it does.”

“Where are they, Mulder?” Spender demanded, the anger within finally breaking through a little.

“I have no idea." 

“Do you want me to force the answer out of you?” Spender asked, his voice now returned to a dangerous calm.

“If you want to believe you can then that’s up to you.”

“Oh I can,” Spender laughed, the sound making Mulder feel deeply uncomfortable despite the calm and collected exterior he was projecting, “believe me I can.” 

There was another silent standoff until a faint knock sounded on the door. “Come in,” Spender called without moving his eyes from Mulder’s. Spoletta appeared around the door.

“Your other guest to see you, Sir,” he announced.

“Ah, good,” Spender smiled at Mulder, “it seems your luck is still with you Agent Mulder. I may not have to force the answer from you after all.” Mulder’s brow furrowed as Spender finally looked away from him and up to Spoletta. “Let her in please.” Spoletta stood back and after a moment Scully walked into the office, she inhaled on seeing Mulder who spun in his chair to look at her.

“Scully?” 

“Mulder?”

“Scully, what are you doing here?”

“He left me a message saying he’d arrested you,” Scully answered in confusion, indicating Spender. Her eyes drifted to Mulder’s lap and she noticed the handcuffs shining at his wrists. Her hands moved instantly to her gun but Spoletta spotted the action and quickly drew his own weapon in response. She froze with her hand hovering over the holster. “What the hell is going on here?” she demanded.

“I was hoping that Agent Mulder could provide me with the answers to a few important questions,” Spender explained, entirely unphased by the sudden violent shift in the room, “however he is currently being most uncooperative. Perhaps you would be willing to assist me instead Miss Scully?” 

Scully’s eyes fluttered down to meet Mulder’s. He met her gaze with eyes wide and afraid. Scully didn’t need to be psychic to understand the message he was trying desperately to make her understand. She stared at Mulder, fear beginning to build within her and she suddenly became aware of Spoletta beside her, his gun now trained on Mulder.

“Your weapon please,” Spoletta demanded, holding his free hand out to her.

“Like hell,” Scully spat back, not even bothering to look at him.

“Mr. Spoletta here is a remarkably quick shot Agent Scully,” Spender commented casually, “and a remarkably accurate one too. I suggest you don’t choose to test out his reflexes for yourself.” 

Scully froze for a few moments as she decided what to do. Angrily she unclipped her holster, removed the gun, and handed it forcefully to Spoletta, hitting his hand with the metal barrel. Spoletta lowered his own weapon from Mulder, removed the clip from Scully’s, and stowed her gun in a spare holster at his hip. 

“Mr. Mulder, I’m offering you one last chance to be reasonable,” Spender continued, looking back at Mulder, “tell me the whereabouts of John Byers, Richard Langley, and Melvin Frohike or I will find the information out by other, less pleasant means.” 

Mulder turned back to Spender and locked eyes with him, tipping his head slightly to one side and smiling politely whilst remaining completely silent. The two men regarded each other in silence for a few more long moments as Scully watched helplessly, her eyes flicking from one man to the other, all the time aware of the presence of Spoletta just behind her. 

“Very well,” Spender sighed. He looked up at Spoletta. “Take Mr. Mulder down to level three and prep him.” Spoletta nodded and moved forward to grasp Mulder by the shoulder and pull him up out of his seat. Scully felt herself beginning to panic.

“Where are you taking him?” she demanded.

“Downstairs,” Spender replied in a sickly soothing voice, “to our preparation floor.”

“Preparation for what”? Scully pushed, her eyes narrowing as she glared at Spender and tried to ignore Mulder's eyes trying to catch her attention.

“We can discuss that momentarily,” Spender said rising from his seat and stretching his muscles. “Please excuse me for a moment, Miss Scully.” He stepped out from behind his desk and left the room, whispering something to Spoletta as he passed.

“You can have two minutes,” Spoletta told them, letting go of Mulder and walking toward the door, “I suggest you use them well.” He followed Spender and closed the door behind him leaving Mulder and Scully alone. As soon as the door clicked shut Scully turned to face Mulder, desperately trying to control her emotions.

“Mulder?” she whispered, annoyed at the way her voice emerged in a frightened whimper.

“It’s gonna be OK Scully,” Mulder tried to assure her. She stepped forward toward him and he lifted his cuffed arms to let her step into him, dropping his hands down behind her to hold her in an embrace. “He’s just trying to frighten us.”

“It’s working,” Scully whispered into his chest.

“Don’t let him get to you Scully,” Mulder begged her, “you know what he’ll do to the boys if he finds them. They’re our friends, we have to protect them.”

“I know,” Scully agreed, “but he’s determined Mulder, he’ll do anything to find them.”

“You can't tell him anything Scully, you can't tell him where they are. I need you to promise me that.”

“Mulder, I,” Scully replied hesitantly.

“Promise me, Scully, please, promise me,” Mulder begged, pulling away as best he could to look into her eyes.

“I promise,” she whispered nervously.

“He’s going to tell you things, he’s going to lie to you. You know he’s a liar and a blackmailer, he always has been. He’ll say anything to make you tell him what he wants to know, it’s why he’s splitting us up,” Mulder told her, “stay strong Scully. He’ll realize eventually that he can’t make us say anything. The boys are safe, we need to get out of here, and then we can start clearing their names OK? I’ll get us out of here.”

“OK,” Scully whispered, burying her face into his chest and inhaling the scent of his aftershave. The smell calmed her a little as she felt Mulder’s arms tighten around her. The door clicked.

“Time’s up,” Spoletta’s voice sounded from behind Scully's back. Mulder pulled away from Scully, raising his cuffed arms over her head to release her. As he stepped back and walked toward Spoletta, Scully remained rooted to the spot watching him leave. He turned back to face her as he reached the door. Scully tried to smile at him but the expression didn’t quite make it to her face. She watched Mulder disappear through the door and saw it swing shut behind him leaving her alone in Spender’s office. 

Scully swallowed hard and clamped down hard on her emotions. She had been in worse situations than this before. She had told more difficult lies to more important people than this before. She had lied about Mulder’s death to an entire board of FBI directors, all trained investigators, and she had been successful. She had even lied to the Senate. All she had to do here was feign ignorance, keep up that charade and there was nothing he could do. There were no tangled webs of lies to keep straight, just that one thing, “no, I don’t know where they are. No, neither does Agent Mulder.” Keep repeating the mantra and everything would be OK. The door clicked again and she spun to look at it, smelling the acrid scent of stale tobacco before Spender’s figure had moved into view. She screwed up her nose as the smell threatened to make her gag. Spender closed the door behind him and Scully flinched as she saw him flick the lock closed. Despite the fact that she could easily undo it, the act seemed to symbolize something that frightened her deeply. The idea of being locked in a room with Spender made her want to run and scream but she focused herself, glaring harshly at Spender as he passed her on his way back to his desk. He sat and reached forward, taking a sip from a glass of liquor that sat there before reclining back into the leather seat. He looked entirely at ease.

“Now, Miss Scully,” he began. “let’s talk.”

“Before you say anything else, I want to know where you’re taking Mulder,” Scully demanded, "and what are you going to do to him?"

“Agent Mulder will be prepared for transportation to one of our research facilities,” Spender explained without a trace of remorse, “there he will become part of our ongoing test program.”

“What kind of tests?” Scully asked, afraid she already knew the answer.

“I’m sure you of all people are aware of the nature of our work, and of the experiments necessary to perpetuate that work,” Spender answered.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Scully half snarled at him in response. 

“Wouldn’t I?” Spender asked her. Scully felt her chest constricting, she had to remind herself to breathe.

“Agent Mulder is an employee of the Federal government,” she growled, “what you’re doing is kidnapping a federal officer. You can’t…”

“Can’t I? I think we both know that isn’t true Agent Scully,” Spender interrupted, “I can, I have, and I will. Our vaccine has reached an important milestone and the decision has already been made to recruit a number of new test subjects for trials. Agent Mulder’s stubborn refusal to cooperate in our investigation into the Pentagon incident is unfortunate, however, sending him to join the program helps me considerably. Two birds with one stone if you will.” 

Scully glared at him with so much hatred she found herself surprised the man didn’t keel over from the sheer force of her will.

“I won’t let you do this.”

“I thought you might say that,” Spender replied, reaching into his inside pocket and withdrawing a fresh packet of Morleys. He slowly slit open the plastic, slid it off the box, and removed one cigarette before returning the pack to his pocket and picking up a lighter from the desk. He carefully lit the cigarette and took a long draw on it before speaking again. “I’m sure we could come to some sort of...practical arrangement which would benefit both of us and Agent Mulder?”

“What do you mean?” Scully asked warily.

“Please, sit down Miss Scully,” Spender replied, indicating the seat Mulder had only recently vacated. Scully froze for a moment, then stepped forward and sat down facing Spender. The seat was still slightly warm and Mulder's lingering heat sent a shiver through her. She had to rescue him but right now she wasn’t entirely sure how to go about it. She felt naked without the weight of her weapon pulling down on her shoulder and resting heavily against her ribcage. Naked and vulnerable. It was a sensation she hated as it reminded her too clearly of the times she had been taken by men against her will. She suddenly became aware of the scent of old clothes and dead flowers. It was something she had experienced every time she felt true fear for the last five years. The scent of a dark cupboard in an old house where she had understood the force of true evil for the first time.

“What is it you want from me you bastard?” she hissed, shoving the memories away, down into the dark pit in her mind where she visualized those fears residing. 

“Really Miss Scully, I would have expected better manners from you,” Spender replied.

“Consider yourself lucky I haven’t pinned you up against that wall and choked you cold with my bare hands you self-righteous son of a bitch."

“One can only hope,” Spender replied quietly. Before Scully had a chance to contemplate his meaning, he continued. “You know exactly what I want Miss Scully. One thing only, the whereabouts of your three friends.”

“I don’t know where they are,” Scully lied easily, “neither does Agent Mulder. Can we leave now?”

“Oh come now Miss Scully,” Spender laughed, “do you consider me a fool? We both know you’re lying so let’s not play this game.”

“OK,” Scully agreed, trying to think up a new angle to play, “let’s assume you’re right and I am lying, I’m still not going to tell you anything so why waste our time?”

“Very well,” Spender smiled, “then you’re free to go.”

“And Mulder?”

“I’m afraid Agent Mulder stays with us, a bargaining chip of sorts if you like. Perhaps one of you will consider the long term implications of your actions soon and see reason.”

“And those would be?” 

“Equally bad for Agent Mulder and for the United States.”

“Now who’s lying?” Scully asked coldly. “We both know you’re lying about the content of those files. I’ve seen them. There are no weapons blueprints, only details of experiments your group has been conducting on innocent people. Innocent soldiers. Men and women who signed up to protect and serve our country and you treated them like lab rats. You’re afraid. Afraid of the repercussions if this information got out. The public won’t stand for it and you know that.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Spender hissed back at her, “can’t you tell a fake document when you see one? Those files, the documents you’ve seen, they're nothing but a smokescreen to cover up the truth that sits in the rest of that folder. They contain allegations so terrible that anyone discovering them would become so preoccupied with them, they would never think to look deeper. To discover the real files buried deeper within. The ones that contain details of the most horrific biological weapon mankind has ever seen. A weapon whose effects you have seen with your own eyes. If these files were made public, the government would simply explain the truth - that none of those experiments ever happened. We can deny everything and have the evidence to prove it. Agent Mulder and your friends will never find the real secrets contained in those files they stole, but other governments might. If those files were released our enemies could set their best men to work on them. Men far more adept at uncovering truths than your friends could ever hope to be. They could find out about that weapon, discover how to use it and then, use it against us. Can you live with that on your conscience Miss Scully?” 

The room fell silent.

“You’re lying,” Scully told him in a voice she wished was louder.

“Am I?” he asked her, “are you willing to take that chance?” Scully felt doubt creeping into her mind. Mulder’s voice echoed inside her head, reminding her that Spender would lie to her, would tell her anything to make her believe him. She knew that was true, but she also knew Mulder. He could be hot-headed to the point of madness. So utterly convinced of his own personal truth that he missed the reality that surrounded him. So willing to accept a lie that fits his own personal narrative over the truth. The files had been perfect. Evidence against Spender and his syndicate laid out in crystal clear black and white pages. Evidence of extraterrestrial invasions, alien viruses, government conspiracies, and everything else Mulder had fought for. She should have known it could never be that easy, that no single batch of documents could ever be the undoing of a group of men as meticulous as Spender. They should have all seen it for what it was.

If it were true, any part of it, then by letting the Gunmen release those files she could be responsible for the deaths of millions. If Iraq or Russia or North Korea got a hold of the same biological weapon whose effects she had seen inside a cinema in West Virginia, the consequences would be unimaginable. A voice in her head screamed in protest. The very idea of giving up her friends to Spender was abhorrent to her but by doing it she could stop them from making an enormous mistake. They would hate her, she knew that. This kind of deal was almost certainly unforgivable to them but maybe one day they would understand why she did it. Maybe when they saw that they were wrong, that they had also been fooled by the smokescreen contained within those files, maybe then they would accept her apology. 

Mulder was a different problem. He had begged her to stay silent. Giving up this information to Spender was probably the worst betrayal she could perform and she doubted their relationship could weather it. Losing Mulder now after they had finally come together seemed like a cruel joke but she knew what she had to do. Spender sat watching her, making no attempt to interrupt her thought process. It felt almost as if he could read her mind and knew she was coming to what he considered to be the correct conclusion. The very idea made her shudder.

“OK,” she whispered in defeat. “I’ll tell you where they are but you have to agree to let Mulder go.”

“Of course,” Spender agreed instantly, “I’ll have no need to keep him here once your friends have been collected.” Scully fought down a tremor as Spender’s tongue rolled around the final word. She didn’t like the way it sounded. He stood up and walked behind Scully to unlock the door. She twisted in her chair to watch him, uncomfortable with having him behind her and out of sight. Spender opened the door and she heard him call into the larger office beyond. “Mr. Spoletta?”

“Sir?” the man’s voice replied after a moment.

“Miss Scully has found some clarity, please come in.” Spender stepped back inside and went to sit at his desk again, he was followed after a moment by Spoletta who closed the door behind him and moved to stand beside Scully. She noticed the way he stood ramrod straight and guessed the man had some military experience. “Miss Scully has agreed to give up the location of the three suspects who removed classified files from the Pentagon yesterday evening,” Spender explained, “please assemble a team to bring them in. Before you leave, however, please collect Mr. Mulder from the preparations room and return him to this office.”

“Sir?” Spoletta stammered. Scully had the distinct impression that no one sent to this ominous-sounding room had ever been allowed to leave, at least not on foot.

“Agent Mulder’s release was a condition of Miss Scully supplying this information,” Spender told the man calmly, “I’m sure you’ll agree that the information received equals a valuable trade?”

“Yes Sir,” Spoletta replied quickly. Even if he disagreed, Scully was sure the man had more sense than to argue.

“Now Miss Scully, if you’ll please share your information we can get this unpleasant business out of the way,” Spender smiled. Scully took a deep breath, there was no going back from this.

“They’re in a hidden room in the basement of Agent Mulder’s apartment building,” she told the two men in a voice barely above a whisper. “The door is concealed behind shelving inside the cupboard in the laundry room. There’s a release catch at the back of the third shelf, just beside the two yellow pipes.” She swallowed hard, desperately trying to prevent the bile she felt oozing up her throat from fighting its way any higher and making her vomit. She felt dirty, both physically and mentally. All she wanted was to escape from this room and get outside into the sunshine that poured through the slats in the blinds. Once she knew that Mulder was free, she could demand her weapon be returned and leave. Mulder would never leave with her, she knew that. He might even stay in some desperate attempt to help the Gunmen. If he did then she would give him her weapon and follow his directions, even if that meant never seeing him again. An image of San Diego swam into her mind. She might go and visit Bill for a while, soak up some California sunshine while she figured out where to go from now. She might even find time to climb back on a surfboard for the first time since her teens.

“Very well,” Spender replied, his voice jolting the image of blue skies, rolling surf, and warm sand from her mind. “Please get to work,” he ordered Spoletta. The younger man turned on his heel and practically marched out of the room. For a moment Scully was surprised that he hadn’t written any of her directions down, however, after a moment’s thought she decided that men like him probably knew better than to forget.

“That wasn't so bad was it?” Spender almost cooed at her. The bile crept another inch up her throat as a cold discomfort spread its way across her chest. She sank back into her chair, desperate to put even an extra millimeter between her and the smiling face in front of her. Spender seemed disappointed by her reaction. “You’ve made the right decision,” he assured her, taking another sip of his liquor and regarding her over the rim of the glass. “Your honesty has probably saved millions of lives.” Scully tried to assure herself of the same thing but she already felt the creeping dread that she had made a terrible mistake. One that would cost her friends their lives and cost her both the X-Files and Mulder too. She turned away from Spender and focused her vision on a knot in the dark wood of a bookcase that stood looming over her. She heard Spender sigh and was surprised at how sad the sound was but she refused to turn her head. She stared at the dark spot until her eyes began to swim. She would not move, would not acknowledge him nor say another word until Mulder arrived in the room. 

They sat together in silence for longer than Scully had hoped, the only sound the occasional clink of Spender’s glass being returned to its coaster and the rustle of the fabric he wore. She felt like a child in trouble, staring at any point that wasn't the sad, disapproving gaze of her parents or the school principal. Finally, she heard the click of the door once again and spun to look at it. What she saw made her gasp and choke back a sob. Mulder walked in looking tired, half his head was shaved, a rough line indicating that the process had been stopped suddenly mid-way through. A bandage was also wrapped around his left wrist, Scully guessed that a cannula had been inserted and then removed. Mulder looked around the room suspiciously.

“Is this going to take long?” he asked, “we were about to begin my pedicure.” He leaned against the door, clearly unwilling to enter further into the room. 

“You will soon be free to go,” Spender told him, “your lovely partner has seen reason and as soon as my colleagues have completed their errand then I will have no further need to keep you here.” Mulder’s eyes flickered down to Scully’s as his brow furrowed. She knew that guilt must be written into every line of her face. Unwilling to speak, she tried to beg his forgiveness with her eyes alone. Mulder looked back up at Spender.

“What do you mean she’s 'seen reason',” Mulder asked in a threatening voice.

“Agent Scully has provided me with the location of the three suspects I requested,” Spender continued. Mulder’s eyes shot back down to Scully’s and the look of hurt and betrayal she saw in them made her physically recoil, she felt burned.

“What the hell did you do to her?” Mulder demanded, stalking slowly across the room toward Spender’s desk. 

“I didn't do anything,” Spender half-laughed, raising the palms of both hands to Mulder in a contrite gesture of surrender, “Agent Scully volunteered the information.”

“She would never,” Mulder began, hissing the words through his teeth. Scully couldn’t listen to him anymore, as he passed her chair she reached out and rested her hand on his forearm. 

“Mulder…” she began, he snapped his eyes to look at her, the intense anger still burning in them.

“Do not say it, Scully,” he growled, “do not say he’s telling the truth.” Scully wasn't sure she needed to say it, she was sure her face was telling Mulder everything he needed to know, and everything she wished he didn’t. She swallowed, desperately trying to find the words to apologize.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “Mulder it was the right thing to do.” He rounded on her then, his seemingly huge frame leaning over her as she practically cowered in her chair.

“What?” he spat. “You actually told this lying bastard where our friends are? That’s what you’re telling me, Scully? That you freely volunteered this information to him in full knowledge of what he will do to them? To people who have helped us, who have saved our lives?” he stared at her and his eyes were no longer angry. Now they were filled with a vengeful fury the likes of which she had only ever seen flicker briefly across his face when he was looking into the eyes of the sickest of serial murderers and child molesters. Not once had she thought that the full force of Mulder’s fury would ever be directed at her.

“Mulder I...”

“No Scully!” Mulder shouted in her face, “yes or no? Is that what you did? Answer me!” Scully bit her lip to try and stop the tears from escaping her eyes. She couldn’t physically speak, it felt as if her throat had completely closed up. All she could manage was the tiniest fraction of a nod. She stared up into Mulder’s eyes begging forgiveness but instead all she thought she saw was something breaking. Mulder looked insane, practically deranged. His right arm suddenly twitched and for a brief moment, Scully flinched away, convinced that he was about to bring it up and hit her. A voice in her head was screaming at her to defend herself, to sit up and scream back at Mulder, but she couldn’t make herself do it. If he did decide to hit her she had a sickening realization that at this moment she would probably let him. Her tiny flinch away from him seemed to have snapped Mulder back to some sense of reality, the God-like fury had left his eyes to be replaced with burning anger and agonizing pain. 

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Spender’s voice slid out of the darkness behind Mulder. She shuddered, having forgotten the man was still in the room with them. Neither of them bothered to acknowledge him as he crossed the office and shut the door behind him as he left. Mulder stayed frozen in position for several more seconds after the lock had clicked. Eventually, he pushed himself backward from Scully’s chair and started pacing the room. Scully brought her knees up and tucked her feet under herself. She knew that she was instinctively trying to make herself smaller in order to present a smaller target, but she couldn’t stop herself. She felt stupid. Used and stupid. Mulder had warned her that Spender would use any means necessary to make her give up the information. Had she really been that easy to manipulate? The idea made her feel nauseous.

“Why Scully?” Mulder’s voice broke through the cacophony of voices inside her head that were screaming words like ‘traitor’, ‘betrayal’, and even ‘murderer’ at her. Mulder’s voice was different. It was small and quiet. To Scully, it sounded broken. One of the voices in her head laughed.

‘You’ve done it now’ it whispered to her ‘you’ve finally broken him once and for all. You were all he had left and you betrayed him’. Scully rounded on the voice and screamed at it to shut up, wondering as she did so if this is what it felt like to go mad. She looked up at Mulder and saw that his eyes were glittering. He sat down on the floor of the office resting his back against the wall, now looking tired with dark shadows under his eyes. The fury had left them completely to be replaced with a look of abject defeat and misery. “Please,” he begged, “please make me understand.”

“The documents you saw,” Scully began in a hoarse whisper, “they were fake, a cover-up for the real secrets contained in those files, information about the biological weapon I saw being tested in West Virginia. If the Gunmen let that information get out then enemy governments could have found it and used that weapon against us, even against their own people. I couldn’t let myself be responsible...” Scully heard herself speaking Spender’s words as if by rote but even as they tumbled out of her mouth she knew they weren’t true. Spender had lied to her, had played on her fears so precisely that even though she had been looking for the lies and the manipulation, she had still been blindsided by it. She was reminded of a book she had read years ago when Melissa had loaned it to her, a book about a shopkeeper who manipulated his townspeople into destroying themselves and the people they loved by giving them the things they wanted most. Wasn’t that exactly what Spender had done to her? Given her the opportunity to save millions of lives, to stop the release of a deadly weapon. The idea resonated in her very core, it was everything she wanted to do when she entered medical school. Spender had handed her the opportunity on a silver platter and all he had asked for in payment was that one small piece of information, the information that she knew now would lead to the deaths of their friends. She suddenly recalled that the shopkeeper in the book had finally been revealed to be the devil himself. 

Scully stared at Mulder and knew that he understood the realization she had come to. He stared back. The look he gave her now was not angry or cold or demanding, it was completely hopeless. She knew he was weighing up the weight of her betrayal and its consequences against what he knew of Spender’s abilities to manipulate people. She also knew the scales would be very evenly balanced. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. 

It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. Even if she lived to be a hundred, even if she apologized every minute of every day until she finally died it would still never be enough; but it was somewhere to start. Mulder looked at her and she thought she saw some small part of the broken thing inside his eyes repair itself. He nodded at her, a smile was still far too much, but the tiniest possible shard of light seemed to break into Scully’s mind.


	3. Act Three

**Office of CGB Spender  
12.27 pm**

The door clicked and Spender reappeared around it, pausing briefly to smile at them both. It was an expression that tried to be kind & fatherly but somehow fell short, as if somehow that particular expression didn't fit onto his features. Instead it looked grotesque and contorted; it made Scully feel slightly queasy so she looked away quickly. 

“I’m happy to see you two have made up,” Spender told them as he passed through the room leaving his usual trail of stale tobacco odor behind him.

“When can we leave?” Mulder asked pointedly, standing up from the position he had occupied on the floor to stand over Spender. 

“As soon as your friends are in my custody,” Spender answered politely, “I wouldn’t want you two running off and helping them escape again. Not that you would I’m sure.” He picked up a stack of papers and began reading them. 

“I want my gun back,” Scully demanded, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Of course, it will be waiting by the door when you leave,” Spender replied without putting down the papers. 

Scully looked over at Mulder who looked both confused and wary of the whole situation.

“So what? We just sit here and behave ourselves until someone tells us to leave?” he asked petulantly.

“I don’t expect that you are capable of behaving Mr. Mulder,” Spender answered, finally placing the papers back on his desk to fix the younger man with a cool stare, “but if you could do as little damage as possible then that would be appreciated.” Mulder was about to throw back a scathing reply when three sharp knocks interrupted him. Spender looked a little surprised at the sound but soon composed himself again. “Come in,” he barked. The door opened and a somewhat portly middle-aged man sporting both a high-quality suit and a well-rounded gut appeared. He held a sheet of paper and was sweating profusely.

“Sir?” he began nervously.

“Yes?” Spender answered impatiently, “what is it?”

“Sir we have a problem,” the man half stuttered. “It’s about…” he stopped as he suddenly appeared to notice Mulder and Scully staring at him.

“Get on with it,” Spender insisted, the other man drew his gaze back up to him.

“It’s about the project, Sir. About the files that were stolen.”

“What about it?” Spender demanded, the tiniest hint of fear appearing on his features amidst the anger and impatience that lay there, “I haven’t got all day to play guessing games.”

“The files on Operation Gulf Purity have been leaked, Sir.”

“Leaked how?” Spender demanded.

“They appeared online about an hour ago, Sir. The Russians, Chinese, and Japanese are already confirmed to have copies of them and it's believed Great Britain and most of the major European powers have them too. The political bulletin boards we monitor are beginning to light up as people read them.” 

The portly man looked terrified now. Mulder looked from him to Spender and saw the face of a man whose empire was collapsing around him as he stood watching, unable to do a thing to stop it. “Sir it’s not just those files,” the man continued in a voice barely above a whisper. The encrypted data secured inside the files has also been leaked including the SHIELD protocol and…” Spender’s fist slammed down on the desk with such a loud bang that everyone in the room jumped. The man went silent, only just maintaining eye contact with Spender who looked ready to kill.

“Thank you,” Spender told the man who stepped back a little in shock at the apparently polite reply. 

“Should I assemble the group?” the man stammered.

“That will not be necessary,” Spender bit back. The man shot another quick, nervous glance at Scully and Mulder before scurrying out of the room as fast as he could. As Mulder watched the exchange and his brain slowly caught up with what had been said, he felt a bubble of incredible joy beginning to fill his chest. The boys had done it. Whatever was on those files they had managed to find it, free it from the security and encryption of Spender’s precious Syndicate, and release it for the world to read. Already the news agencies would be finding out about everything he had fought to show the world for years. The truth about the alien virus, about the secret tests on innocent civilians, about colonization. Before the night was through the whole world would be in on the secret. 

Mulder wasn’t foolish enough to believe that any of this would change the immediate future. Any hope the boys may have had for leniency was completely inconceivable now. Spender would punish them in the worst way he could, but time was running out for him now and his little project was over. The incredulity of what had just happened hit Mulder full force and without warning he began laughing wildly, tears streaming down his face. The sudden outburst of emotion shocked Scully who jumped then stared at him open-mouthed as Mulder wept and looked over at Spender, an enormous grin spreading over his face.

“Guess you’re out of the job Smokey,” he jeered. Spender glared at him with more fury than Scully had ever seen but Mulder appeared oblivious in his mirth. “What use is a secret keeper when everyone knows the secret? Hope you know your way to the unemployment line.”

He tried to keep a straight face for a moment then started laughing again. He wanted to dance for joy around this obnoxious little office, filled with the superficial trappings of power. The huge, dark wood desk, the elaborately framed photographs of presidents on the walls, the cut crystal decanter filled with whatever drink Spender chose to sip in order to keep up his Bond villain ethos, it was all ephemera. Gossamer decorations designed to ornament the illusion of power but now that bubble had been burst, all that power was gone and all this would fall with it. Mulder wondered if this office would even exist by the end of the week or if it would be another deserted magnolia room in another deserted steel and glass building. Indiscernible from the countless others that dotted the city. The thought made him giggle again. He looked at Scully and saw that she looked afraid. He wanted to hug her and tell her that she needn’t worry anymore. Their enemy was not dead but he was rendered impotent, his power destroyed entirely, it would just take time for that to be made obvious. His gaze flicked to Spender who looked murderous, an expression which previously would have scared Mulder if only for the fact that Scully was trapped in the room with him, but which now appeared comical - almost cartoonish. So,” he began, controlling his amusement for long enough to speak a full sentence, “can we go now?” Spender regarded him from behind the enormous desk.

“Let me make a call,” he answered silkily, picking up the phone and dialing a few numbers. The phone buzzed only once and Mulder heard a man’s voice at the other end. “Please come up, I have a job for you,” Spender asked the man, putting the phone down immediately before the other man had time to reply.

“You don’t need to arrange an escort,” Mulder quipped, “I took orienteering in Indian Guides, I’m pretty sure Scully and I can find our way out of an office building.” He looked over at Scully and grinned but she didn’t return the expression, instead, she looked white and even more afraid than she had before. Her eyes pleaded with him to stop goading Spender. Mulder felt a surge of his anger returning. He wanted to snap at her and tell her to lighten up, she was still to blame for Spender getting the information he wanted. However, there seemed little point and Mulder wanted them to present a united front in front of Spender, especially in this hour of victory.

The door opened and another man entered. Unlike the thin, sharp-suited men that usually hung around Spender, this man wore combat fatigues and a dark t-shirt under a leather jacket. His hair was crew cut and his skin was marked with the unmistakable scars of many past injuries. He had the look of a trained thug and Mulder felt his stomach drop slightly. Spender nodded toward Mulder and the man strode forward and grabbed his arm.

“Stop!” Scully demanded, launching out of the chair she had been occupying the whole time Mulder had been in the office, “what are you doing?”

“Cleaning up a mess,” Spender replied calmly, “it seems your friends have done a little more damage in this short timeframe than I anticipated. The first step in clearing all this up is to get rid of the evidence. That includes anyone linked with the theft of those files, including Agent Mulder.”

“What do you mean ‘get rid of’?” Mulder demanded, even though he had a clear idea of exactly what Spender’s meaning was.

“I don’t think I need to answer that,” Spender answered.

“What?!” Scully yelled, slamming her hands down on Spender’s desk and staring at him manically, “you can’t!”

“I can and I will,” Spender interrupted, looking past Scully to the large man who continued to hold Mulder’s arm in a death-grip as if the pair of them were nothing more than a mild irritation. “Take Agent Mulder to the hotel and dispose of him,” Spender told him. 

“The usual scenario?” the man asked, his voice had a foreign accent that Mulder struggled to place.

“Yes,” Spender nodded, “make it clean,” he added looking at Scully in faux sympathy. Her eyes widened.

“No!” she screamed. The man began dragging Mulder toward the door and Scully spun away from Spender’s desk and ran at him. She managed to land a high kick to his stomach and get a blow to his left cheek with her fist which was more than Mulder had expected, but unarmed she was simply no match. The man shoved Mulder behind him toward the door and faced Scully head-on. The last thing Mulder saw before he was dragged from the room was Scully pushed backward with such force that she fell against Spender’s desk, her head connecting with the solid wood with a sickening thump and her eyes closing into unconsciousness on the thick red carpet.

**Apartment of CGB Spender  
2.59 pm**

Scully came to lying on a soft, warm leather couch. The leather was old and worn and it cushioned her aching body softly. She couldn’t remember falling asleep but the couch felt like Mulder’s and she relaxed into it breathing in the sweet odor and listening for the gently thrumming sound of the fish tank filter. Only the air tasted wrong. Instead of the scent of Mulder’s aftershave and three-day-old Chinese takeaway, Scully smelled stale tobacco and chemical cleaners. Her mind tried to catch up to her body. The sound of the tank filter had been replaced by heavy traffic and the sound of men arguing somewhere nearby. She opened her eyes and saw magnolia walls and mahogany shelves dotted with gold-framed photographs of people she didn’t recognize. She shifted slightly to get a better look at her surroundings.

“I was beginning to think you’d never wake up,” Spender’s voice spoke from somewhere too close. Scully’s heart froze and her chest tightened. Her memories flooded back in a single giant wave, crashing into her consciousness and washing away everything else. She sat up rapidly, feeling instantly dizzy and almost collapsing back down as soon as she was upright. “Careful,” Spender said, his voice laced with what sounded like genuine concern. Scully felt his hand on her shoulder attempting to steady her, she immediately yanked it away and felt a jolt of pain shoot down her arm and across her second rib.

“What happened?” she asked, realizing as she spoke how dry her mouth was. Spender seemed to understand it too, he stood up and poured her a glass of water from a jug on a nearby table, bringing it back to her and handing it over. Scully didn’t say thank you.

“You tried to assault one of my group,” Spender told her with more than a hint of amusement in his voice, “only you made a rather unfortunate choice. The man you attacked has fifteen years of combat service and that’s just the details kept on official records. Off those records, well there’s a good reason I keep him around.”

“He does your dirty work?” Scully asked, her throat feeling infinitely better after the water but her stomach still churning.

“He takes care of the more physical aspects of my work, yes,” Spender agreed. 

“Where’s Mulder?” Scully demanded.

“Agent Mulder is in a hotel across town,” Spender told her calmly.

“Take me to him, now,” she insisted.

“Miss Scully you know I can’t do that,” he replied.

“Why the hell not?”

“You know what’s going to happen next. Do you really want to be there when it happens?”

“I’m not going to let it happen,” she spat, slamming the cup down and standing up, not caring that the water splashed out of the sides and over the expensive wooden table in front of her. “Why are you doing this?” she continued in a slightly smaller voice. Spender sighed and began slowly pacing the room.

“Two words you’ve heard me use before many times,” he explained to her, “plausible deniability. In the event that a severe breach in security was to happen as it has today, our job was to shut down all links between our project and the US government. Severing all ties and allowing the president and those in elected positions of power to remain there. If the public were to believe that the government knew about this, then there would be outrage and fear would take over. Those in power could not remain in their elected positions of authority and in the absence of that authority, the country would be at risk. My group and similar groups in all the nations working together on the project agreed to take the fall in this situation but first, we have to sever every tie. Agent Mulder is a US government employee and has well-documented ties to Senator Matheson, he has to be eliminated.”

“What about me?” Scully asked quietly, “why are you not eliminating me as well?”

"You were assigned into this, you didn’t choose to become involved. Secondly, there is no evidence tying you to the theft of the files from the Pentagon, you can walk away cleanly. And thirdly,” he paused and looked at her. Scully saw for the first time how different he seemed. Some of his usual coldness had vanished and his swagger was missing. He seemed somewhat more fragile but this only served to make Scully more afraid. She knew how dangerous the most innocent of people could become when faced with losing everything and Spender was facing the end of his career and possibly even his life. He was possibly more dangerous than ever before. “I like you,” Spender told her finally. 

“But Mulder’s your son,” she pleaded, “how could you send your own son to die?”

“You’re a Catholic aren’t you Miss Scully?” Spender asked, “surely you know the story of Abraham and Isaac?”

“Yes but sacrificing your son because God commanded you to is different from sacrificing him to stop the government from collapsing!” she shouted. Spender considered her for a moment as her head pounded. She looked around and realized she was no longer in the office. Instead, she appeared to be in an apartment decorated in a similar style. “Where am I?” she asked.

“In my apartment,” Spender answered quickly.

“You took me to your home?” she choked out, feeling nausea creep over her again.

“I live here in the office,” Spender explained, walking over and opening a door. Scully saw that it led straight into the office where she had sat with Mulder. “When you were knocked out I brought you in here and put you on the couch, I didn’t want to leave you on the floor.”

“You live in your office?” Scully asked incredulously. For the first time, she felt a twinge of sympathy for this old man. Mulder’s life was his work but at least he walked away from it each night, shot some hoops with the guys at the gym, or played his silly video games long into the night. To actually live in your office building signified a life so empty of anything but work that taking that work away would reduce it to nothingness. The alarm bells in her mind increased their volume slightly, the danger here was still increasing.

“It seemed practical,” Spender explained, “I often work late and I need very little in my life outside the office. A television, my typewriter, a bed, and some space to store my things. Why spend time driving between an apartment and the office when I could combine the two?” Scully looked around and noticed that the apartment was devoid of almost anything personal. A few ornaments stood on shelves between thick leather-bound books. The photos showed men of power; presidents, business leaders, and other men whose names she did not know but whose confidence and power shone out of their features. There were no family photographs. No pictures of Spender as a boy or photographs of carefree days spent in the sun. Scully knew that Spender had been married. He had raised Jeffrey and later Samantha Mulder as his children along with Cassandra, but looking around now there was no evidence that he had ever lived a family life. 

“Please,” she turned to him and forced down the sick feeling she felt from begging the man, “Mulder can’t do any more damage to you or your project. He never entered the Pentagon when the files were stolen. Even if he were somehow linked, his reputation as a crackpot would protect the group from any links between them and his theories. The truth he wanted is already out there, there’s nothing more he needs to do. I’d keep him silent, I promise, just please don’t kill him.” Spender looked at her and Scully felt her heart jump a little, he seemed to be at least considering her.

“My life is over after this, you realize that?” he asked her. Scully looked back at him in slight confusion. “Do you think they’ll want me around when those in charge of investigating these allegations come knocking?” He walked over to a small window and stood staring out over the city. “I’m only surprised I'm not dead from a sniper’s bullet already.” 

“I won’t lie and say I’m sorry,” Scully replied.

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Spender agreed, turning back to face her. He looked at her and Scully saw something in his eyes that made her organs contract away from it, she suppressed a shudder. “I’ll consider releasing Mulder on two conditions.”

“What are they?”

“Firstly you go underground. You leave The FBI and never speak a word about all this to anyone.”

“Done,” Scully agreed instantly, “what else?” 

Spender took a step toward her, bringing him within arm's reach. Scully forced herself to stay rooted to the spot but closed her eyes and he reached out and plucked at a small part of her hair, running it through his fingers. She realized there would never be enough shampoo in the world to clean it but at least hair could be cut off.

“I’m a very lonely man,” Spender almost whispered to her. The words snaked their way through her mind, gathering meaning as they went. Scully suddenly understood the implication of what he was asking. Her eyes flew open and she pulled away from him. The hair that he had been caressing fell against her cheek, she felt as if it burned her where it touched.

“No!” she almost screamed. Every fiber of her body urged her to run. She knew Spender wouldn’t try to stop her now. She could be free, free from him forever, but she had to stay.

“That’s my deal,” Spender continued, walking past her on his way back to his desk in the office. As he passed Scully found herself physically recoiling from him. The scent of the tobacco assaulted her again, leaving behind an image in her head of his calloused skin on hers. His yellowing fingers touching her in places that only Mulder had found in these last seven years. The thought made her feel sick and she clutched at her stomach. Spender sat down at his desk in the office and began sorting some papers out. Scully watched him through the open door, afraid of moving or making any sounds. After a short time, she watched him pick up the phone and dial a number. 

“Is everything in place for tonight?” he asked, pausing to listen to the response down the line, “yes, Agent Mulder has been moved to the assigned location,” he replied. Scully stiffened, listening more intently to the conversation. “Smith has the assignment, I trust him to handle it cleanly. He’ll take Mulder onto the roof, do the job and call it in once he gets back to the ground. He’ll be miles away before the police even arrive on the scene. He has plenty of experience at this, the job will be done right and by then the other three will have been dealt with appropriately as well. Have our men been removed from their positions at the Pentagon?” Spender went quiet again as Scully struggled to catch every last detail of his conversation. “And they have been dealt with?” he asked, the pause was brief this time. “Excellent, then as soon as my loose ends are tied up everything is clean.” He put the phone back onto its cradle and began scribbling notes. 

Scully retreated back into the shadows of his apartment. She felt sick. She had to rescue Mulder but without a clue where he was, that would be virtually impossible. The only thing she had to go on was that he was in a hotel, but there were thousands of hotels in Washington and she had no idea if Mulder was even still in the city. She tried to think of some solution but her thoughts were too jumbled and she couldn’t focus. Fear and anger raged inside her and left no space for logical thought. Tears pricked at her eyes but she fought them back. She would not cry in Spender’s apartment. Would not allow herself to be discovered by him looking weak and giving him another way to exploit her. Instead, she knelt on the wooden floor by the couch and brought her hands together in a ball below her chin. Closing her eyes she began to pray.

**Apartment of CGB Spender  
4.11 pm**

Scully stayed on her knees long past the point of pain. The hard wooden floor bruised her skin but she didn’t care. Spender seemed content to leave her there and so she recited every prayer she could remember. She asked God for help, for Him to lead her to the answers she needed. She recited a full rosary and when she finished, she began reciting Hail Marys. One for Mulder, one each for the Gunmen, even one for Spender. The repetitive chanting helped clear her mind but no enlightenment reached her. As she continued she saw that the light outside was beginning to change. The first hints of twilight were descending. She was running out of time.

A sharp knock at Spender’s office interrupted her thoughts so Scully stood up and moved slightly toward the connecting door so she could watch what happened.

“Come,” Spender called, not bothering to look up. The office door opened and the young man Scully knew now as Spoletta entered. He approached Spender’s desk and stood before it with his hands clasped firmly behind his back, oblivious to Scully’s presence. He stood perfectly still and silent while Spender finished his work. Eventually, Spender capped the pen he was writing with and looked up.0

“Are the three suspects in custody?” he asked.

“Not exactly Sir,” Spoletta replied, Scully could tell from his voice that he was nervous. Spender looked angry.

“What do you mean not exactly?” he barked. “Did you find the men in the location Agent Scully described or not?” Scully felt a pain in her chest at Spender’s words, a sharp reminder that this was all her fault.

“Yes, Sir the men were there,” Spoletta answered quickly.

“And did you bring them into custody?”

“Well Sir, not exactly as I said. It wasn’t exactly necessary,”

“What do you mean?” Spender demanded. 

“Well, Sir you see the men were already dead when we arrived.” Scully gasped and choked back sobs and Spoletta turned at the sound. He seemed shocked that Scully was there listening but he quickly turned away and back toward Spender.

“Already dead?” Spender exclaimed. “How? Nobody else knew about their location.”

“It seems they saw us coming, Sir. They had a security feed running from the basement access into the room, they must have seen us on the screen. Before we could break in they swallowed something, we believed they were cyanide pills. They were all dead before we made it into the room.” 

Scully could no longer hold back the tears. She moved away from the open door and sat back down on the floor, cupping her face in her hands. She couldn’t believe the Gunmen were dead. She had still believed that somehow she would be able to save them all. That somehow everything would play out and they would all go back to living the same lives they had before all this happened. Why had they been so stupid to break into the Pentagon and steal those files? Surely they must have known that the group would never allow them to get away with that? 

‘But they did know’ a voice in her head told her calmly, ‘that’s why they had the pills. They must have known there was a good chance of something like this happening so they secured those pills just in case.’ Scully tried to imagine them all putting one of the pills into their coats, all agreeing to take their own lives together if the time came. And it had come. Three of her closest friends had died, locked inside a tiny room in the cramped basement of Mulder’s apartment building. Scully had been in that very room last night. After confronting Mulder, he had taken her to the place they were hiding. It was tiny, barely enough room to move and most of the space taken up with a few computers and miles of wires. It was from that room that the boys must have released the liberated files onto the internet. From there they broke through the encryption set up by Spender and his group. From there the truth had finally been set free. 

Scully’s silent tears abated slightly at the thought. At least they hadn’t died in vain. They had succeeded in doing what they always planned to, in freeing the truth and sharing it with the world. And they had died together in a way they had chosen. Surely that was better than whatever Spender had planned for them? That thought shattered Scully’s peace once again. Until this point Spender had four individuals to take out his anger and frustration on. Now, with the Gunmen having taken their own lives to prevent him from enacting a far worse fate on them all, Spender was left with just one victim - Mulder.

She silenced her sobs and strained her ears toward the office where Spoletta and Spender were still talking. 

“Do you still wish to proceed as planned regarding Agent Mulder?” Spoletta was asking.

“Yes,” Spender agreed “it is imperative that we resolve this issue as quickly and thoroughly as possible.”

“Smith is in place,” Spoletta replied, “Agent Mulder’s execution is scheduled for 11.21 this evening.”

“Good,” Spender replied, “however I think I may change some of the details with Smith.”

“Sir?” Spoletta asked curiously. Scully’s chest tightened once more as she strained to catch every word.

“Now that Agent Mulder’s friends have acted on their own, there seems little need to make it appear that their deaths and the death of Agent Mulder were in fact planned by any outside agency. The three men’s suicide can easily be explained away by guilt when they realized how grandiose a mistake they had made in releasing information to the world that will endanger their entire country.”

“And Agent Mulder Sir?” Spender remained silent for some time.

“Shot in the line of duty whilst pursuing a suspect,” Spender explained coldly, “I will have our contacts within the Bureau set up the necessary records on Agent Mulder’s computer. The record will show that Agent Mulder was pursuing a case alone without the support of his partner on the agreement of his superiors. He chased the suspect onto the hotel roof and tragically lost his life.”

“Sir, I hate to disagree but won’t that situation seem somewhat coincidental considering Agent Mulder’s links to the other men and the thefts?” Spoletta asked nervously.

“Mr. Spoletta, you would be amazed at the situations that people are happy to explain away as mere coincidence,” Spender told him. “With no evidence to the contrary and the Bureau’s backing, this situation will be put to rest in no time.”

“And Agent Mulder’s partner?” Spoletta asked quietly, clearly aware that Scully was listening.

“Is my problem,” Spender answered sharply, “Agent Scully is a sensible woman, she will be of no concern to us.”

“Yes Sir,” Spoletta agreed immediately.

“Good. Now I have a call to make, you are excused.” 

“Yes Sir,” Spoletta answered. He turned and exited the room. As he walked he caught sight of Scully watching him, his eyes expressed sympathy toward her for a brief moment but then he was gone. Scully straightened herself off and marched out of the apartment to stand in front of Spender’s desk. He seemed a little surprised to see her.

“Miss Scully?” he asked politely.

“What are you gonna tell him?” she demanded, “What are you going to tell your man to do?”

“I will simply tell him to make the shooting less clean,” Spender explained to her, “to make it look more amateurish.” Scully didn’t like where this was going.

“How?” she demanded.

“A less clean shot,” Spender suggested, looking at her with a cold smile, “perhaps a shot to the stomach rather than a single bullet through the head.”

“You wouldn’t,” Scully gasped, “that will hurt him more.”

“I know,” Spender agreed, trying to sound consoling, “but if we can clean this up without appearing too involved then perhaps our work can continue.” 

Scully stared at him. Now, instead of Mulder being murdered execution-style with a single almost pain-free bullet to the head, he would probably be left to die cold and alone on a hotel rooftop. Bleeding out in agony while she desperately tried to find him. She couldn’t let it happen. Spender’s hand reached for the phone and picked up the receiver. As he did the sun came out from behind a cloud and hit Scully's necklace, reflecting the golden cross in the empty glass that stood on his desk. Scully stared at the dazzling brightness for a moment as the image burned itself into her mind. A sense of purpose overcame her and she knew what to do. Reaching out suddenly she snatched the phone from Spender's hand and slammed it back down into its cradle. 

“I'll do it,” she told him, sounding a lot more confident than she felt. Spender's brow furrowed. “Your deal,” she explained, “I'll take it. To save Mulder.” His eyebrows raised and he smiled a predatory smile. 

“Excellent!” He smiled at her and Scully felt her skin crawl. 

“On one condition,” she added quickly. The smile fell slightly off his face but he quickly fixed it. 

“You're not in much of a position to issue demands, Miss Scully,” he told her sweetly. Scully raised one eyebrow slightly but said nothing. Spender sighed heavily, “what is it you want?” He asked. 

“Safe passage for me and Mulder out of the country,” she told him. “I want false papers - passports, plane tickets, and my medical license reissued all under new names. I want money, you can have what's in Mulder's account but I want the same sitting in a bank when we get out. I want all of it in my hand before we do anything more.” She stared at him. “You're making me do this so I want assurances that once we're gone you'll leave us alone.” 

“You'll never return to the United States?” Spender asked. 

The question made Scully's heart hurt. The USA was her country. It was where she was born and where she grew up. Her family was here, so were all her friends, her alma mater, her church - everything that had made her the person she was. But Scully also knew that she could adapt. Growing up in a Navy family had forced her to learn that skill. She had been forced out of her home and away from her friends more times than she cared to remember but she always adapted, always moved on, always made new friends. This was a bigger change than any of those, to move to a new country would be an enormous change but the world was going to change too thanks to the Gunmen’s work. Now the truth about aliens and colonization was out there, nothing would stay the same for long and if being out of the country meant that she and Mulder could live in safety then it was a small price to pay. She felt briefly bad for making the decision for Mulder without his consent but considering the alternative, she doubted he would mind all that much.

“Yes,” she agreed, “If you never come after us.”

“Then it’s a deal,” Spender replied. “Where do you want to go?” 

“England.” 

The word was out of her mouth before she was even aware of making a conscious decision. It made sense. Mulder had lived in England for several years already when he attended college there and he had always spoken fondly of the experience, previous girlfriends not included. Scully had never visited but it was a country that had always hovered near the top of her bucket list. Moving to England would position her close to her extended family in Ireland as well so she wouldn’t feel quite as isolated. 

As Spender nodded and picked up the phone to arrange for her papers, busying himself on his computer to help process the request, Scully found that she was actually quite looking forward to it all. Tonight she would rescue Mulder then together they would gather their necessities, drive to the airport and board a plane. She wouldn’t look back, she couldn’t. Spender ended his phone call.

“Your papers will be delivered here in the next twenty minutes,” he told her smugly, “two British passports, two plane tickets to London out of JFK first thing tomorrow, a British medical license, and bank details for an account at a London bank. Agent Mulder’s savings have been set to transfer there but they won’t be available for several days so you also have a thousand dollars and four thousand sterling in cash.”

“What names are they in?” Scully asked, suddenly nervous.

“Kathryn and William Kennedy,” he told her. Scully inwardly breathed a sigh of relief, she could live with those, at least it wasn’t Petrie.

“Fine,” Scully replied coolly, “now call it off.” 

The two of them stared each other down for a few seconds until Spender broke the contact and picked up his once again, asking Spoletta to come back in. Scully found herself feeling slightly sorry for the man, he must be starting to feel like a yo-yo with all his in and outs from Spender’s office. They didn’t have to wait long before the younger man appeared at the door again.

“Sir?” he asked, “you needed to see me?”

“Yes,” Spender replied, “I need you to sign out a set of blank bullets and take them up to Smith at the Hyatt.”

“Sir?” Spoletta asked, looking from Spender to Scully curiously. 

“You are to inform Smith that his task has changed to a protocol 33,” Spender continued, “hand him the ammunition and return here. Is that understood?”

“Yes Sir,” Spoletta agreed immediately, “can I ask Sir? Is this another Jim Grant?”

“That is correct Mr. Spoletta,” Spender agreed, “I trust you’re up to the task?”

“Yes Sir,” Spoletta agreed, standing up and excusing himself from the room.

“What’s going on?” Scully demanded. “Who’s Jim Grant and why…”

“Miss Scully,” Spender hissed. “You seem to be under the impression that I am the only person who wishes to see your partner dead tonight.” Scully blanched slightly at his words but stayed silent to let him continue. “Agent Mulder’s execution was going to be witnessed by several other members of my group, members who have wished for nothing more dearly than your partner’s untimely death for many years. They want to make sure it happens with their own eyes. I cannot simply ‘call off’ tonight's event as these men will take up the mantle themselves. However, I can arrange to have the execution faked. This way the rest of the group will believe your partner dead, making your flight from the country that much safer.”

“And Jim Grant?” Scully asked.

“Jim Grant was a member of our group who was believed a traitor, however, I and a select few others had evidence to the contrary. The majority of the group wanted him dead as they believed the evidence in his favor to be circumstantial, only I and two others had seen the events with our own eyes and believed Grant’s account wholeheartedly. I arranged his execution, paying the shooter to use fake bullets and warning Grant ahead of time so he could fake his own death. The group was satisfied and Grant was relocated and allowed to start a new life.”

“So Smith will take Mulder up to the roof where your group will see him shot with blank bullets. Mulder will fall down, Smith will confirm that he is dead, dispose of his weapon and they all leave, then Mulder gets up and we’ll be free?” Scully questioned.

“Exactly,” Spender told her, “and you’ll be there on the roof with all your new papers in your pocket, hiding and ready to run.” Scully swallowed and nodded.

“OK,” she said quietly. She still didn’t like the idea but Spender was right that if the rest of the group believed Mulder was dead it would make them that much safer.

“Good,” Spender told her, “I trust Mr. Spoletta to carry out his task accurately and quickly. Smith will contact me to confirm the change soon so for now why don’t you just relax and make yourself comfortable? I can draw you a bath if you like?” 

“No!” she gasped, startling Spender who had apparently not exacted such a violent reaction to his suggestion. The words brushed against her skin and Scully felt goosebumps race across its surface in their wake. She smelled dead flowers and musty clothes again and heard Donnie Pfaster's voice echoing the sentiment Spender had just issued. She felt sick again but quickly recomposed herself. 

“No,” she stated again, more firmly this time, “don’t think that because I’ve agreed to this that I want it. I’m only going through with this to save Mulder’s life. It’s blackmail and we both know it. Don’t try and make this pleasurable for me because it never will be.” Spender looked briefly hurt but quickly erased the expression.

“You may think that but I intend to enjoy myself and I will do my best to make the experience at least tolerable for you,” he informed her, “I have no intention of hurting you, Dana.”

“You already are,” she told him bluntly, “and you don’t get to call me Dana.” Spender sighed and looked down at his papers.

“Very well,” he replied coldly, “I take it I won’t be able to interest you in dinner beforehand?”

“Not even slightly,” Scully told him. Scully doubted she could keep any food down anyway considering the way her stomach was rolling in knots at the realization that soon Spender would demand his side of the bargain. There was no getting away from it, she had made her deal with the devil and any time now he would be demanding his fee.

“Then you may wait in my rooms until your papers arrive,” Spender told her, “I will come through shortly when they do.” Scully nodded and tried to keep herself from bolting away from him, forcing herself to walk away at a steady pace. She could feel his eyes on her as she walked, knowing that he was eyeing her possessively and imagining things she didn’t want to think about. She closed the door between his living room and office and leaned against it with her eyes closed. It wouldn’t last that long and once it was out of the way she could escape his clutches forever. 

Forcing herself back up again, Scully began looking around the apartment in an attempt to keep her mind from the unpleasant task ahead of her. She found the kitchen and poured herself a glass of cold water from the fridge. There was very little food to be found but she located a packet of chips and helped herself to a handful just to try and calm her stomach. Returning the packet to the cupboard she looked around the other rooms, eventually discovering the bedroom where she froze in the doorway. 

The bed was large with expensive-looking cream sheets that appeared to be made of incredibly high-quality cotton. She inched over and touched them, they felt wonderfully soft. In any other circumstances, Scully would be looking forward to crawling into that bed, feeling that softness all around her and relaxing into it. This time, however, she had to try and fight off a panic attack. The sheets were soft and clean but they still smelled of Spender, a mixture of stale tobacco and his musky aftershave. It filled the room and her head. Scully started imagining the feel of his hands on her bare flesh again. She ran to the open bathroom door and collapsed by the toilet, throwing up the chips and water she had just consumed. After a moment she felt better. She flushed the toilet and cleaned herself up, refusing to do anything to make herself look prettier, even refusing to brush her fingers through her hair which lay limp and tangled after an evening of worry and very little sleep. Petulantly she rubbed at her make-up a little, smudging her eyeshadow and lipstick. Spender would have her for the night but he wouldn’t have the real her, that only belonged to Mulder. She would lie back and think of England while Spender had his way and then she would leave. 

The play on words made her laugh harshly. She really would be thinking of England, of the life she would live with Mulder once they were free of this mess. She hadn’t yet decided if she would tell him about the deal she made for his life. She suspected that she would, Mulder would demand to know what she could have possibly offered Spender in exchange for his life. She knew that he would be disgusted, horrified by the idea. The thought of touching her where Spender - his own father - had touched would repulse him, and rightly so. Scully figured that this was her purgatory, her punishment for revealing the Gunmen’s location. She would live through hell tonight but she would escape and leave it all behind. Eventually, she hoped that Mulder would understand, that he would be able to overlook the shadows of Spender on her body and would burn them away with his own. It would take time but one day they could be happy again. 

She left the bathroom and walked back through Spender’s bedroom heading for the living room and her handbag when something glinted in the corner of her eye. Curious, she froze and looked over at the nightstand where the light had been emitted. she walked around and her eyes widened. Lying there beside a stack of books and a number of envelopes, partially obscured by the top sheet of paper, was a letter opener. It was long, thin, and shone golden in the afternoon sunlight. Scully picked it up and the rest of the blade revealed itself, glittering dangerously in her hand. It was almost 10 inches long and looked sharp, very sharp. An idea flashed into Scully’s mind. She had been disarmed when she had arrived at the office hours before and no other means of defense had presented themselves. Her scan of the kitchen had revealed no knives with any defensive capability, she knew because she had looked, wondering if Spender had removed them for his own safety. If he had then he had forgotten about this. perhaps he had thought that she wouldn’t venture into his bedroom alone. Whatever it was, ideas were dancing through her head now. She stabbed the blade into the air in front of her, twisting it as a smile crossed her lips. Carefully she withdrew the knife from her imaginary victim and slid the blade carefully inside her bra, hidden beneath her shirt. She felt a sting as part of the blade nicked her flesh but she was careful. Finding a mirror she checked her reflection. The blade was invisible beneath her clothing. Now all she had to do was wait. 

Fifteen Minutes Later

The door opened as Scully sat on the soft leather sofa that dominated Spender’s living room. She wasn’t relaxing as he had so amiably suggested. Instead, she sat ramrod straight counting the seconds until she could escape and occasionally whispering a Hail Mary under her breath. 

“Your papers are here,” Spender told her, showing her an unmarked brown envelope that bulged in its center. Scully reached out for the envelope feeling another scratch from the blade concealed by her skin.

“Let me see,” she demanded. Spender handed over the envelope and Scully tipped the contents out on her lap. First, she saw the money. There were five piles, each containing the same number of notes. The first pile contained a wad of familiar green notes, the face of Andrew Jackson staring solemnly out at her. The remaining four contained notes that were larger and unfamiliar to her, the colors making them look fake. Flipping one pile over she came face to face with the stern expression of Queen Elizabeth II. 

“Each stack is £1000 pounds," Spender told her, "fifty twenty pound notes in each." Scully flipped through each stack, assuring herself that they were all identical. Next, she checked the passports. Both looked strange, from the red covers to the statement on the first page. She flipped to the back and scanned over the information. The photos were the same ones used on their FBI ID badges, clearly stolen from the FBI's personnel records. Hell, what's one more criminal incident against the US government all things considered Scully thought? She noticed that the passports listed an address in London. 

"Where's this?" She asked.

"A standard cover address we've used a few times," Spender told her, "we have them in most major cities. Kathryn and William Kennedy have lived there for several years and have a good credit record on file. You'll have no problems getting somewhere new to live." She nodded slowly. Spender's group really was everywhere. The thought made her shudder. 

Closing the passports she checked over the financial documents that listed account numbers for a major British bank and the medical license which showed that Kathryn Kennedy had graduated from King’s College London in 1990 with a first in forensic medicine. Those details made her happy; King's College was a well-renowned school and her high grade would make finding work in her field that much easier. Not that money would be much of a concern given the figures listed on the bank statements and savings accounts. Finally, she checked the plane tickets. The flight was due to depart JFK at 10.13 am the following morning. That gave them enough time to pack what they couldn’t leave behind and make the early check-in for the international flight. Scully carefully repacked everything into the envelope feeling significantly more at ease. One hurdle was behind her, now she just needed to clear the next one.

“It looks good,” Scully told Spender who was watching her closely. 

“I’m glad you think so,” Spender told her, “now, my side of the deal.” Scully took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

“OK.” Spender reached out and took her right hand, stroking the skin near her wrist with his thumb. Scully had to resist the urge to yank it away from him. The urge to throw up was almost overwhelming but she controlled herself. She needed to make this work. Spender edged close to her and gently unbuttoned the cuff of her sleeve, pushing the fabric up to her elbow. His fingers trailed over her skin leaving uncomfortable goosebumps behind. He lifted his hands to her collarbone and began pushing her jacket away from her shoulder while trying to lower her onto the couch. She reached up and caught his hand, shaking her head.

“You’d prefer the bedroom?” he asked with sickening politeness.

“Yes,” she choked out, managing to conceal her disgust under what she hoped might sound like a seductive whisper. He held out a hand and led her across the wooden floor into the plush carpeted bedroom where golden sunlight streamed through the window and glowed softly on the white cream linen. Spender stood beside the bed and turned to her, catching her wrist in his and reaching his other hand out to caress her hair. Scully tried to relax a little from the taut position she was holding. She couldn’t allow Spender to fully embrace her as he would feel the hidden blade but she allowed herself to be drawn a little closer to him. His hand released her wrist and reached around to begin trailing soft fingers up and down her spine. She felt his fingers brush over the slightly less sensitive skin of her tattoo and she wondered briefly if he knew it was there. She figured that he must, photos of it had been included in the case file on Ed Jerse, a file in which her name was mentioned repeatedly. Spender prided himself on knowing everything, she couldn’t imagine that he would allow an X-File with her name in it to pass him by. She wondered what he thought when he saw it but then pushed the question from her mind. She needed to concentrate. 

Spender’s hand was up at the nape of her neck now, his fingers tangling into the hair there, wrapping it gently around his fingers to tug her head backward and expose her throat. She allowed it to happen, slowly bringing both her hands in front of her. She reached out to touch his chest with her right hand, allowing the movement to disguise the motion of her left hand which carefully slipped between the buttons of her blouse and clasped the handle of the letter opener, carefully withdrawing it from underneath the fabric. As she did, the blade nicked her skin once again, she gasped in pain, quickly transforming the sound into something more akin to a moan. Spender was fully focused on her neck now, nipping at the soft skin near her shoulder with his teeth. He seemed to accept the noise she made as one of pleasure and returned the sound himself. Scully sneered, knowing he couldn’t see her face at this angle. She twisted the blade carefully in her hand, gripping the guilt handle tightly as she positioned it to kill. Spender began trailing kisses up her neck and over her chin. As he approached her lips, Scully knew that this was the moment. This was the line she could not allow him to cross. He opened his eyes and looked into hers as he moved to kiss her lips. She smiled back, and a puzzled expression crossed his face at the unexpected expression. As he moved forward to kiss her, Scully forced every ounce of strength she could muster into her arm as she forced the razor sharp blade forward and up in a movement she knew would rip through his diaphragm and up into his left lung. Spender’s eyes, still locked with hers, bulged out as the pain tore through him. Scully gasped and half snarled as she twisted the blade forcefully in her hand and ripped it out and plunged it down again, this time higher up, aiming perfectly between the ribs and into Spender’s heart. She let go of the blade and stepped backward. 

Spender was frozen in shock but she could already see the red stains seeping out from the wounds and spreading slowly across his crisp white shirt. Spender finally broke eye contact, looking down at the handle of the letter opener that now protruded almost comically from his chest. He reached down and with both hands, pulled at the handle, slowly extracting the gold blade which now shone red with blood. He held the blade up in front of him and Scully saw the blood dripping from it, leaving behind bright red spots on the bed linen. Spender dropped the blade and reached for his shirt, pulling it apart to reveal the two wounds which continued to bleed soaking through his clothes. He looked up at her and Scully was amazed to see him smile.

“Thank God,” he whispered. Scully stared at him in bewilderment as he clutched at the wound at his heart and staggered slightly, leaning himself against the bed and collapsing down onto it. He looked back up at her. “The Dana Scully I’ve admired all these years would never allow herself to be used by a man like me,” he gasped out. “I realized as we began that to have you in my bed in this way would always be a failure because it wouldn't really be her, the Dana Scully I admired and wanted. But it was the one failure I was willing to accept because I knew it was the only way I could ever have you. Now I see that I was wrong. You were too strong even to allow that." He gasped for a breath, his chest heaving as blood seeped into his punctured lung. “Will you do me one last favour? A last request?” he asked her.

“What?” Scully asked in disgust, “isn’t this what you’d call a bad position for making demands?”

“Kiss me,” Spender begged her. Scully walked over and knelt beside the man, looking deep into his eyes. She hoped she might see remorse, even fear lurking there at the moments before his death but instead she saw nothing but the cold hearted smugness she had grown to despise over the years.

“You want me to kiss you?” she asked, not attempting to mask the disgust in her voice.

“Yes,” he whispered, his voice weak now his final breaths approached

“This is how your precious Dana Scully kisses men who violate her,” she whispered and as she leant forward her hand gripped the handle of the blade which lay at her feet, swinging it up and slashing Spender's throat. He gasped, choked and fell back from her as Scully stood up, sneering in disgust at the body at her feet and dropping the blade with a heavy thunk onto the floor. She watched him choke on his own blood and saw his body become still on the floor as the blood continued to soak into the carpet around him. She stared into nothingness for a few long seconds before suddenly shaking herself. She had to get out of here, she had to get to Mulder. 

Looking down at herself, Scully saw that she was covered in blood. She quickly buttoned her jacket, masking most of the mess. She stepped into the bathroom, checking her hair and wiping off a bloodstain from her neck with a square of wet paper. Her hands were red and blood had seeped under her nails. She filled the sink and began scrubbing viciously at her skin, desperate to remove any trace of Spender’s blood from her skin. “Out, out damn spot,” she muttered to herself, laughing mirthlessly at her own joke. 

As she drained the water from the sink and watched the last of the red water disappear, her eyes drifted to Spender’s body reflected behind her in the soft light of the bedroom. She had murdered him. There was no arguing the fact. This wasn’t like Donnie Pfaster, there was no argument for self-defense, Spender was unarmed and hadn’t even threatened her. Of course, the blackmail would count for something, as would the fact that Spender was holding her partner hostage, but neither would count for much against a murder trial - if she could even prove them. Dana Scully needed to disappear forever and the clock was ticking. 

Hastily she left the bathroom and made for the living room and the envelope that guaranteed her freedom. Crossing the bedroom she felt a twinge of remorse so she carefully stepped back to Spender’s body and whispered a single prayer over him. 

“It’ll take more than that to get your sorry ass up to heaven,” she told him flatly. Spender’s dead eyes stared back at her. There was no cold comeback, no witty retort, just those eyes staring vacantly at nothing. She shuddered and reached down to close them. “Good luck in hell,” she added before turning and walking away from him for the last time. She closed the door behind her, adjusting the privacy sign he had hung there to read “do not disturb” and made her way through the living room. She scooped up the envelope, checking its contents again briefly before opening the door to the office and preparing to escape back into the real world.


	4. Act Four

**Penthouse Suite, Regency Hyatt  
7.03 pm**

Mulder shifted on the stark hotel bed, trying and failing to make himself comfortable. For a man like him, this was driving him mad. He got that Spender’s group wanted him dead and he could understand why. What he didn’t understand was why they couldn’t just get it over and done with? Just poison him in the room, whatever was fastest, why all this waiting until the middle of the night to shoot him on the roof like some kind of television spy drama? Mulder supposed it fit with Spender’s grandiose view of the world and his place within it, casting himself as some sort of machiavellian anti-hero, a real-life Bond villain. 

"If he’s Blofeld then I suppose that makes me James Bond," Mulder thought to himself, laughing aloud at the image. He never did like martinis anyway. The picture in his mind shifted slightly as Scully entered. She really would make one hell of a Bond girl Mulder thought, but then Bond seemed to prefer blondes and no matter how hard he tried, Mulder simply couldn’t picture Scully that way. All long blonde waves, silk shirts, and killer heels - that just wasn’t the Scully he knew. No, in the vision in his mind Scully marched up to him as he relaxed against the bar in his tuxedo, a martini, shaken not stirred, beside him, and rather than seducing him, she simply slapped him across the face. 

“We’ve got work to do,” dream Scully hissed at him, “what the hell do you think you’re doing lying around like this?”

“Come on Scully,” Mulder replied lazily, nursing his aching cheek, “what else can we do now?”

“We have to get out of here,” Scully told him. His vision of her shifted between different outfits and hairstyles so one second she stood before him in one of her neat little suits with perfectly arranged hair and the next the vision swam to her in the lingerie set he loved best, her hair mussed around her face. 

“No point,” he murmured, “not now you’re here…” he reached out to pull her toward him and kiss him but as he touched her the vision became forged from smoke and flowed apart. 

Mulder sat up on the bed with a start, clutching his head. He looked around and saw that the room had not changed. There was no martini bar surrounded by attractive young things in slinky cocktail dresses and no feisty redhead marching angrily toward him. He unconsciously touched his cheek and winced at the memory of his daydream. Even as a dream vision, Scully could still wound him. Mulder felt a sharp pain as he thought about her. He still felt angry that she had betrayed their friends, a cut that deep doesn’t just disappear, but the anger had lessened with the hours as Mulder had remembered the countless times Spender had played him for a fool. How many times had he run off on some wild goose chase simply because Spender had dangled something he wanted in front of him? He remembered all too well sitting in a cafe with the woman he believed was his sister as Spender watched from the shadows of his car outside.   
The difference as he saw it now was that while he retreated into guilt after such incidents, he doubted that Scully would react the same. His tendency to turn his emotions inwards and destroy himself was balanced by Scully’s ability to reflect them and use them against others. Spender had used her, manipulated her so completely that Scully’s anger would be unquenchable when she realized the extent to which both her fears and her dreams had been exploited. Mulder had no idea how Scully would react but he doubted Spender would be sleeping easily any time soon. 

As Mulder lay there, grinning slightly at the image of Scully kicking Spender’s ass across that neat little office of his, the door to the room opened. The man hired to stand guard over him and later kill him who Mulder knew only as Smith entered and looked over at him. His face was expressionless. Not cold or evil, just blank. This was a job to him and Mulder was no different to any other man or woman who had come before him. He did his work, he got paid and he moved on. He probably believed that this was all for the good of his country if he believed any of Spender’s bullshit.

“You’ve got just under three hours,” Smith told him.

“Good, I’d hoped to squeeze in a screening of Goodfellas,” Mulder replied. Smith actually grinned a little.

“Not sure they have that here. I think The Sopranos just started though, heard it’s good,” he answered. Mulder grinned back, he didn't feel like grinning, but he remembered his training and what to do if he was kidnapped. Establishing a rapport with his kidnapper could help when things inevitably escalated.

“Hey, would you do me a favor?” he asked. Smith looked hesitant.

“Depends what, if it’s letting you go then no,”

“Damn,” Mulder grinned again. “My second option then?”

“Shoot,” Smith replied.

“There’s a woman, my partner, the redhead whose lights you knocked out,” Mulder told him. Smith looked slightly apologetic.

“Yeah, I didn’t expect her to be quite that vicious.”

“Bigger men than you have made that mistake and lived to regret it. Some of them only for a few seconds mind you, but the point still stands.” 

Smith laughed. “She a bit more than just a colleague huh?” he asked.

“Yeah, something like that,” Mulder agreed, fighting to keep his tone light while his chest ached. “I saw some stationery in the desk over there. I didn’t get to say goodbye to her; if I wrote her a letter would you see that she gets it?” 

He found himself tripping over the words. So far he had treated this whole situation with his usual dry humor and carelessness but as the minutes ticked by and Mulder realized he might not actually see Scully again, his nerves had begun to tingle.

“Sure thing,” Smith said. 

“Thanks,” Mulder replied. Smith nodded and left the room to sit alone in the reception area of the penthouse suite Mulder was occupying. He supposed it would be very awkward to sit and make small talk with a man whose brains you intend to blow out within the hour. Suddenly the image didn’t seem quite as humorous as it had before. The Bond-Villian-style polished crime replaced by something much grittier, something more tangible. 

Mulder swung his legs down from the bed and strode over to the desk, sinking into the impossibly thick carpet as he walked. The large desk by the window was filled with all the stationery he could need. Thick creamy writing paper with matching envelopes all embossed with the hotel logo, expensive fountain pens and extra cartridges of ink, sheets of pure white blotting paper. Mulder extracted what he needed and began to write. It had been a long time since he had used a fountain pen, he wasn’t even sure he had used one since college where Professor Howson insisted all essays were submitted using them. 

He wrote ‘Dear Scully,’ and paused. The words looked wrong. Calling her Scully in this letter felt wrong. It seemed too professional, too detached. He worried that if she read that name, that she would hear his voice in a cool, professional manner rather than the tender voice he wanted her to hear, the voice he used with her when they were alone together. He picked up another sheet and wrote ‘Dear Dana,’ pausing again to look at the words. Those ones looked wrong too. He almost never called her Dana, even outside work when they were relaxing at one of their apartments. It was the name he called her only in the most intimate of moments when Scully became too tricky on the tongue and Dana blended in to become part of a range of other moans and gasps. He supposed that of the two, the latter was preferable. He intended this letter to be intimate after all. 

He lowered the pen back to the paper on the second sheet, frowned, and withdrew it again. How did he even begin to write this? How was it possible to condense everything he wanted to say to her into one letter. Words would never be enough to convey the depth and range of what he wanted to express to her. An old familiar melody swam up from the depths of his memory and he began to hum it, reciting the words in his mind:

_"Vows are spoken, to be broken;  
feelings are intense; words are trivial."_

He understood now why this song had been dredged up but he still couldn’t recall who sang it and that annoyed him. In recent weeks he felt as if his memory had been failing him, it was a sensation that disturbed him by its unfamiliarity. Until now he had always been able to rely on his memory, it was always sharp and always accurate but now pieces seemed to go missing or the images were blurred and distorted. It had started happening at the same time he began suffering from migraines, the first time since his teens. He hadn’t mentioned them to Scully. She would only worry and start trying to diagnose him or dragging him around different hospitals. He wanted their time together to be happy and as carefree as possible so he had simply managed. He supposed he should really have visited a doctor, he did have recent brain surgery that may account for a lot of what was wrong after all. However, seeing as how his brain would soon have a bullet hole through the center of it, he supposed it was a good thing he never found the time to make the appointment, it would have been a waste of the doctor’s time anyway. Another line of the song bubbled up from his memory and Mulder sang it out loud this time.

“Words are meaningless, and forgettable,” he murmured softly, but he didn’t want these ones to be. He looked up at the clock; ten minutes had already passed. He needed to start writing and fast if he wanted to get everything down on paper for Scully to read. Perhaps if he began summoning words and recording them then the right ones would find their way into the flow and he would know what to say. He lowered the pen once again and began to write.

**Regency Hyatt  
9.01 pm**

Scully forced herself to walk through the lobby of the Regency Hyatt hotel as she desperately scanned the room for the elevators. She had already wasted precious minutes stopping into a clothing store on her route to the hotel, she could no longer risk wearing the blood-soaked shirt as it could attract too much attention to her and the last thing she needed was some well-meaning person calling the cops. She had changed in a phone booth, discarding the old shirt behind a dumpster where it would almost certainly be found by some unfortunate homeless person, but by then she and Mulder would be on a plane flying across the Atlantic ocean with new names and new identities. 

She spotted the elevator and pushed her way inside, forcing herself into a gap between several Japanese businessmen. Before escaping Spender’s office building, she had logged onto a computer to discover exactly where Mulder was being held. The office had been deserted, much to her surprise. She figured that perhaps most of his group had already cut their losses and made a run for it before those in power came looking for someone to point the blame toward. It hadn’t been difficult to discover Mulder's location and so she had begun her trek across the city, switching bus routes several times on the off-chance she was being followed. 

The penthouse suite was listed on the elevator controls but required a special key to access it so instead she punched the highest floor listed, the 79th, and rode to the top; she could walk the rest. The elevator ride seemed to take forever as people got off at their different floors. Scully wanted to yell at them to hurry up but there seemed little point. Finally, the display screen lit up with the number 79 and she stepped out alone, looking up and down the corridor for the stairs. She soon spotted the glowing green fire exit sign and made her way quickly towards it, pushing open the heavy door and finding with relief that the stairs led up as well as down. She hurried up one flight and pushed open a second door to find herself facing the Penthouse entrance. There was no other way in except by knocking and hoping someone answered. She stood in front of the enormous door and pounded on it three times, praying that it would be opened. She desperately wished she had been able to find her gun in Spender’s office but if it had still been there it had been well hidden. Thinking back she regretted not bringing the letter opened with her, at least it would have offered her some kind of defensive weapon but the thought hadn’t crossed her mind as she had rushed to escape the building. She heard the sound of a chain being removed and the door in front of her opened to reveal a large, familiar face. The man whom she had attacked in Spender’s office stood before her and seemed amused at the sight in front of him. 

“So you’re Dana Scully?” he asked, “I was told you’d be coming but I didn’t expect you so early.” 

“My business with your boss didn’t take as long as I expected,” she replied edgily, “where’s Mulder?”

“He’s right in here,” Smith told her, standing aside to let her pass him into the penthouse’s small lobby area. She saw where the elevator doors opened just beside her. “Mr. Spoletta stopped by with new instructions a short time ago and told me you would be along. I figured you’d like to pass on the news to Mr. Mulder?”

“Mulder doesn’t know?” Scully asked incredulously as Smith closed and locked the door behind her.

“No,” he answered, “you can have the privilege.”

“How long until you need him?” Scully asked. Smith checked his watch.

“We’ll be heading upstairs just after ten, I was instructed to carry out the job at 10.13 pm. You’ve got an hour.” 

He stepped forward and opened the door into the main room of the penthouse suite. Scully hurried past him and heard the door close behind her as her eyes scanned the room looking for Mulder. She found him hunched over a desk that overlooked the city with a stunning view over the Mall and the Washington monument in the middle-distance. 

“Mulder?” she asked hesitantly. Mulder twisted suddenly in his chair to look at her.

“Scully?”

She smiled as tears threatened her eyes again. 

“What are you doing here? Oh God no, Spender, he’s not, he wouldn’t…”

“No, no,” she assured him, walking over to stand before him and letting him run his fingers through her hair, “I’m here with good news.” 

“Good news?” he asked disbelievingly, “what do you mean?”

“I talked Spender out of his plan,” she told him excitedly, “Mulder we’re going to be free of him. He’s letting you go.”

“Letting me go?” Mulder asked quietly, he sounded unsure, “Scully you know him, he’s a cockroach. He would never just let me go.”

“We negotiated a deal,” Scully told him, “look.” She reached inside her jacket and withdrew the brown envelope, trying to conceal the few blood stains it had collected. She quickly tipped out the contents onto the desk. Mulder’s eyes bulged as he took it all in and picked up the different documents. “We have to leave the country and we have to stay away from anything to do with the conspiracy but the truth is out there now, we’ve won. There’s nothing more to do, we can move to England and live a normal life.”

“Scully…” Mulder said hesitantly, “Scully what did you give him in order to get this?”

“Mulder I…” she paused, unwilling to meet his eyes. She knew that he still couldn’t trust her, not the way he once did after the way she had given up their friends.

“Scully what did you give him?” Mulder demanded. 

“He asked so much,” Scully whispered, barely able to speak. “It was such a small thing in the grand scheme of things but it was everything to me, everything I am.”

“What are you talking about?” Mulder pushed, his voice was controlled. Scully could tell he wanted to be there for her, reassuring her that everything was OK but at the same time he was wary, wary of exactly what it was she had promised Spender in return for this unbelievable freedom.

“He asked for me,” Scully replied honestly, “my body.”

“What?” Mulder breathed. He knew what Scully meant but found himself desperately praying he had misinterpreted her words.

“Me. My body. One night in his bed,” Scully told him, finally forcing herself to look in his eyes. “One night with him in exchange for your life and our freedom.”

“And you said yes?”

“Of course I did, there was no other way. I couldn't allow you to die just to preserve myself.” Mulder reached out and touched her skin, brushing the backs of his fingers down her cheek gently. What had she lived through for him? How could he have doubted her? “But there’s something more,” she carried on. “Spender’s dead Mulder.”

“Dead?!” Mulder repeated dumbly. Scully shushed him immediately, slamming her hand against his mouth. “Dead how?” he whispered back.

“I killed him,” she replied. Mulder’s eyes widened.

“You what?”

“I couldn’t go through with it,” she told him, her voice breaking as she spoke. “I made him bring the documents to the office and show them to me before I let him touch me but while he was off getting them together I found a letter opener in his apartment. I think he’d missed it. They'd already taken my gun and there were no sharp knives or scissors in the kitchen so I think he'd had everything removed to try and protect himself but whoever had cleaned up had missed the letter opener. It was on his nightstand almost buried below books and papers. I’d never have spotted it myself except I was being sick in the bathroom over the thought of what I had to do and when I left the room the sun was shining just right and the blade glinted right into my eyes. I hid it under my clothes. When he came back and showed me everything and told me it was time for my part of the deal I stabbed him. We were in his bedroom and he started touching me. God Mulder, it was like the touch of the devil, every part of it made me feel sicker. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t, so I stabbed him, and then…” she broke off, struggling to speak. Mulder drew her into his arms and held her tightly. “And then,” she continued quietly, "and then while he was lying there bleeding on the bedroom carpet he had the audacity to ask me to kiss him.” Mulder stared in amazement. 

“What did you do?” he asked, nervous about her answer.

“I slit his throat,” Scully admitted quietly. “I’m a murderer, Mulder.”

“The way I see it, he made you do it,” Mulder told her, “he was blackmailing you into agreeing to him raping you Scully. God knows what the bastard would have done if he’d got you into his bed. You were defending yourself and me.”

“No court in the land is going to believe that,” Scully told him, “if I’d just stabbed him maybe but slitting his throat?”

“You don’t have to worry about any of that,” Mulder whispered into her hair, drawing her close up against him so her head rested on his chest. She comforted herself by counting his heartbeats, strong and steady in his chest. “We’re going to leave all this behind and start a new life. I’ll take you to Oxford and we can go out punting on the lake, it’ll be just like Brideshead Revisited.” Scully laughed softly into his chest. “Come on, let’s go,” he whispered.

“We can’t,” Scully told him, pulling away again to look at him.

“Why not?”

“The rest of Spender’s group, they’re coming to witness your execution so they know that their perverse justice has been carried out. The execution has to go ahead or they’ll come after us, but we’re going to fake it.”

“Fake it?” Mulder asked in confusion, “What do you mean?”

“Spoletta has given Smith a set of blank bullets. Those are what will be in his gun when he takes you up to the roof. The group will be watching so when he fires you have to fall down like you’ve been shot for real. Then they’ll all leave, you get up again and we leave. No one will know you’re still alive. It’s the perfect plan.”

“So what, I get to fake my own death again?”

“Yes,” Scully laughed, “but you have to make it convincing Mulder. They have to believe you’re dead or this can’t work and they’ll chase us forever until we’re both dead.”

“Don’t worry Scully,” Mulder reassured her, “thanks to you and several other people I know exactly what being shot feels like. I’m pretty sure I can fake a fatal bullet well enough to fool Spender’s goons. Didn’t I ever tell you I was in the amateur dramatics group at Oxford?”

“No, but you’ll have plenty of time to tell me all your old Oxford stories when we get to England, well most of them anyway, I’m fairly sure there’s several I don’t want to hear.”

“The same ones I don’t want to tell you,” Mulder grinned. “This is gonna be great Scully. We can buy a little cottage in the country and spend our time investigating the mysteries of the United Kingdom. The Loch Ness Monster, the Beast of Bodmin Moor, Black Shuck, the Giant’s Causeway…”

“The Giant’s Causeway is in Ireland, Mulder, not the United Kingdom. I have a lot of relatives who would be deeply offended that you suggested otherwise and besides, it’s a geological formation, not a mythical structure.”

“So they say…” Mulder replied suggestively. Scully rolled her eyes at him and he grinned. “Seriously Scully this is gonna be great. When I went back to England a few months ago, I remembered how much I loved it there. I can’t wait to show you everything. Stonehenge is breathtaking and there’s just history everywhere, I mean sometimes you literally find yourself tripping over it. You can’t walk ten yards without coming across some famous person’s birthplace or the building where something was invented or discovered.” He looked so excited that Scully felt herself start to smile and then a grin burst onto her face. The two of them laughed together.

“I want you to show me it all Mulder,” Scully told him, “and I want us to build a home together, somewhere in the country. I want us to never have to look over our shoulders again. I’ll, oh I don’t know, I’ll learn to make jam or something and I’ll ask mom to send me the family quilt and I’ll learn how to sew and we can add our very own squares to it. I just never want to think about shadowy men in darkened rooms ever again. Can we do that?”

“We can try, that’s as much as I can promise you,” Mulder told her, taking her chin in his hands.

“Does that mean you forgive me?” Scully whispered, more than a hint of pleading laced through her voice.

“Yes,” Mulder whispered, brushing his lips across hers. “Scully, have you heard from the boys, did Spender’s men find them? Do you know what’s happened to them?”

“No one’s told you?” Scully asked sadly. She had hoped selfishly that someone else had delivered the news so she didn’t have to be responsible for it.

“No,” Mulder replied slowly, “but I think I can see it in your face.”

“It’s not what you think,” Scully told him. “Somehow the guys had gotten a hold of cyanide pills. When they saw Spoletta and the others coming on their way to break down the door, they swallowed them. I think they wanted to take their own lives rather than let Spender and his men have their way with them.” Mulder nodded slowly.

“I think if it were my choice I’d have taken that route as well,” he mused. “I don’t know what Spender had planned but cyanide seems infinitely preferable to anything that son of a bitch could cook up.”

“You’d take your own life?” Scully asked quietly.

“To avoid that fate, yes. Wouldn’t you?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” she answered. The thought of Spender’s hands touching her filled her mind again and she shuddered, she had a fairly good idea of what he might have included in her ‘punishment’ if she had been involved in the Pentagon break-in and had been caught. “Yes,” she answered finally, “Yes I’d take a pill too. There are some fates worse than death.” They stood looking at each other sadly when a quiet knock interrupted them. Smith poked his head around the door. 

“Thirty minutes,” he told them before disappearing again.

“Thirty minutes huh?” Mulder repeated, looking at Scully suggestively.

“Mulder I don’t think I can,” Scully whispered in reply, “all I can think of is him. I can still feel him on me.”

“Then let me burn away those memories. Come on Scully, grant a dying man his last wish.” Scully snorted a laugh and rolled her eyes again.

“You’re terrible Mulder,” she told him, allowing herself to be pulled toward the bed.

“I know but you still love me,” Mulder told her with a grin. She smiled back.

“Damn you Mulder but I do,” she admitted before collapsing down with him onto the bleached hotel sheets.

**Penthouse Suite, Regency Hyatt  
10.03 pm**

Smith had knocked on the door at three minutes past ten to let them know it was time. If he had been surprised to find them half-dressed and tangled together under the sheets then he had done a good job at suppressing the emotion from his face. 

“Five minutes,” he told them, vanishing back around the door before they could reply. They had scrambled to find their clothes and pull them back on but they were ready before he reappeared. He smirked slightly at the sight of them. “Come on,” let’s get this over with,” he’d said. They followed him out of the door but Mulder had suddenly frozen.

“Wait, I forgot something,” he said. He ran back into the room under the curious gazes of both Smith and Scully and grabbed the letter he had been writing from the desk. Folding it in two he handed it to Scully, “don’t read it yet,” he whispered to her, “on the plane.” She smiled and nodded, tucking it safely inside her jacket beside the other papers she cradled there.

“You can’t be with us,” Smith told her, “if the others see you they’ll almost certainly kill you.”

“I know,” she’d replied, turning to Mulder and looking him in the eyes. “Remember what we talked about OK?”

“Don’t worry,” he assured her, “I’ve got it all from here.” She smiled and reached up to kiss him.

“I love you,” she whispered quietly into his ear.”

“I love you too, now go, we’ll be together in a few minutes and this will all be over.” 

Scully smiled at him and watched Smith lead him out of the door. She counted to thirty and followed them out. There was no sign of them anywhere. Silently she opened the door to the fire escape and began a slow climb to the roof. The door opened with a low creak, revealing the dark Washington night. She slowly let go of the door, easing it back into place so it made no noise except the faintest click. Scanning the area Scully spotted a row of vents from the air conditioning system, all of them were more than big enough for her to hide behind. She crouched down and settled herself between two vents that were positioned at such an angle that she could see Mulder and Smith across the roof from her. Smith was talking quietly but she could catch small chunks of his conversation.

“...easier if you face away from me,” he was saying, “isn’t pleasant… gun pointed right at you.” Mulder had nodded and looked around the rooftop. She wasn’t sure if he was looking for her but she daren’t risk revealing her position. Mulder looked nervous and Scully found herself worrying too. This should be easy, but somehow it didn’t seem so anymore. The thought of sitting by while someone pointed a gun at her partner and pulled the trigger felt wrong; Scully found herself wishing it was her standing in front of Smith’s bullet and not Mulder. What if he didn’t fall right? What if one of the witnesses became suspicious? 

"Stop it," she hissed to herself, "it will all be fine." 

As she faltered, she heard the sound of the door being opened again and froze, pressed closely against the vents. Three men in black suits stepped out and walked over to where Smith was standing. The first man said something to him that Scully couldn’t make out and Smith nodded. The man then turned to Mulder and asked him a question. Mulder smiled his usual cocky grin at the man and answered him. Scully couldn’t make out everything he said but she caught the words truth, justice, and freedom. The man turned back to Smith and Scully didn’t need to hear him in order to make out his words.

“Do it.” The men formed a line near the edge of the roof and Scully found herself wishing that a strong gust of wind would come and blow all three of them off and down to the street eighty floors below. 

“Turn around, hands behind your head,” Smith told Mulder. Mulder did exactly what he was told and Scully realized she was holding her breath. She watched Smith raised his gun and removed the safety. He aimed at Mulder and less than a second later the sound of a gunshot ripped through the air. Scully watched Mulder’s knees buckle and saw him collapse to the ground in a perfect fall. Smith walked over and kicked at Mulder’s shoulder. He turned to the other three men and nodded before dropping the gun beside Mulder and walking to join them. All four men walked in a line back to the fire escape door and made their way through it. Smith was the last one to step through. Before he did he paused and looked around. Scully wasn’t sure if he was looking for her or not but after a moment he too stepped through. The door clanged shut and the night was silent again. Scully forced herself to stay put as she counted slowly to ten, her eyes glued to the door as she waited to check that nobody was coming back up. This was part of their plan. She reached ten and slowly stood up.

“Mulder,” she hissed across the roof. “Mulder!” Mulder remained perfectly still. Carefully she made her way across to him. The closer she got, the more fear ate away at her. “Mulder!” she called again as she approached him. “Mulder please! We’ve got to go!” Mulder still didn’t move. She paused for a moment as she looked at him. Scully had visited many crime scenes before, she knew how they looked and more importantly, she knew what an exit wound in a suit jacket looked like. 

“Mulder!” she called again, terrified to step any closer as her voice became a pleading cry, “Mulder please get up.” He didn’t move. By now Scully knew he wouldn’t, but her brain simply refused to acknowledge it. She forced herself to take the final few steps toward him, crouching down beside him and shaking his shoulder. “Mulder?” Her voice didn’t even sound like her own. Carefully she tugged on his arm and pulled his body over, her hands flying to her mouth to stifle her scream as she saw the bullet hole in his shirt surrounded by a bright red stain that was still spreading across his shirt. Mulder’s eyes were closed. Pointlessly she reached a shaking hand out to press two fingers against his neck. Nothing. Choking out frantic sobs she grabbed at his hand and pressed her fingers against his wrist. Nothing. 

“Mulder!” she sobbed. “Mulder please, please come back. Mulder, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She collapsed against him, resting her head on his chest to try and breathe in some of his familiar and comforting scent. The scent was still there but it was mixed with the stark smells of blood and gunpowder, and his chest didn’t rise and fall in its comfortingly familiar cadence. Scully started to cry uncontrollably. She had no idea what to do. Opening her eyes she saw the gun lying beside Mulder’s body. She reached out and took it, opening the clip to check the bullets. Every single one was a live round. Spender had betrayed her again. There had never been any deal, he was never going to allow them to escape. It was all a trick. 

“YOU BASTARD!” she screamed into the night, her voice already hoarse from her violent sobs. She grabbed the envelope and threw it away from her into a puddle of rainwater. As she did the letter Mulder had written fluttered away from the pack and landed beside her. Through tears, she reached out and grabbed it. She was about to open it when she heard the door to the fire escape thrown open.

“There!” Spoletta shouted, “it was her! She was alone with him in his apartment just before he died.” The three men who had witnessed Mulder’s execution rushed out from the stairwell behind him and spread out to block off her escape.

“Miss?” the first one called out, a hint of manic glee in his voice, “I’m gonna have to ask you to come with us.” Scully looked between the four men as the second one stared at her.

“There’s no way out,” he told her menacingly. Scully looked down at her hand where Smith’s gun still sat. 

“Yes, there is,” she whispered to herself. What was it Mulder had said to her in the hotel room less than an hour ago when she had asked him incredulously if he would ever consider taking his own life? To avoid certain fates, fates worse than death, and after considering his words for a brief moment she had agreed with him. Now she looked back at the men who were slowly advancing towards her. She had murdered Spender. Any hope she once had of escaping into some perfect world of punting down the Thames in a hazy, endless summer of British sunshine and strawberries on the lawn was as dead as her partner. She didn’t want to know what they would do to her but life imprisonment was pretty much the best thing she could possibly hope for and the thought of that wasn’t especially appealing. She made up her mind.

“Sorry boys,” she called back to them, raising the gun and feeling the cold bite of the steel against her temple, “not in this lifetime.” She felt the pressure of the trigger against her finger, heard the beginnings of a loud crack, and then she felt nothing.


	5. Epilogue

**Annapolis, Maryland  
Two Weeks Later**

Walter Skinner stood on the wet grass, blinking his eyes against the harsh sunlight. Nearby he could hear quiet sobbing. Sighing, he turned and looked towards the sound. Margaret Scully was dabbing at her eyes again as she desperately tried to stop herself from breaking down completely. A young man in full Naval uniform put his arm around her shoulder and she began shaking even harder. Skinner knew that the man was one of Agent Scully’s brothers but he wasn’t entirely sure which one. He looked away and closed his eyes, swallowing down the sharp lump that had formed in his throat. 

Today, he felt like a failure. His job was to protect his agents and a little over two weeks ago, two of them had died together on a roof in downtown DC. The incident was still the focus of a major investigation but Skinner had enough experience to know that no satisfactory conclusions would be drawn from it. The Bureau’s resources were almost completely tied up investigating the fallout from the release of countless classified documents onto the internet, documents that had shed light on the shadowy organization that had hidden within the government for decades. Literally thousands of old cases were being reopened and everything from JFK’s assassination to Watergate was being torn apart and scrutinized in great detail through the lens of the new information. The deaths of two FBI Agents and three computer hackers didn’t rank very highly in the grand scheme of things when a worldwide conspiracy regarding the truth about extraterrestrial life had been revealed. The only things that Skinner did know were that Mulder had been shot once in the back, a clean shot directly to the heart killing him instantly and almost certainly the work of a professional contract killer. Scully had taken her own life with a single bullet to the head. Skinner closed his eyes and fought to control the violent images in his head. He had identified the bodies and he doubted the scene he had been confronted with on that dark rooftop would ever leave him.

The sound of Mrs. Scully’s sobbing increased a little and Skinner opened his eyes again, looking out over the water to where a small boat sat moored off the shoreline. A man stood aboard the boat and nodded toward the group of men and women on the shore, each one dressed in black. The man with his arm around Scully’s mother nodded back at the man and he lifted an urn from a box in front of him.

“John Byers,” said the man on the boat, his voice relayed by walkie-talkie back to the assembled mourners, as he gently tipped the contents of the urn into the ocean. Gently setting the urn down he picked up the next one. “Richard Langly.” The ashes of that urn joined the first one in the ocean. “Melvin Frohike,” came next and Skinner actually smiled a little at the memory of the funny little man he had met on occasion over the last seven years. 

He looked around again at the gathering of people. Most of them were Scully’s family, all stood together in an obvious show of solidarity. A number of FBI personnel had turned out as well, more than Skinner had imagined would want to show themselves as allies to the X-Files division. Perhaps now Mulder’s precious truth about aliens had been revealed, more agents were willing to have a connection with Spooky Mulder, no matter how small. Skinner spotted the faces of AD Kersh and AD Cassidy standing side-by-side toward the back of the group. Burkowski and a sizable handful of the tech nerds stood together with a new recruit under Skinner’s area, Agent Harrison, looking openly devastated by the situation. Holly was beside Skinner and he noticed a large group of the forensics teams from Quantico off by themselves. Stood a good distance from the Bureau group was an odd bunch of men and women in a vast array of clothes, none of which could possibly be classified as professional attire. Skinner figured from the way they kept shooting wary glances toward the Bureau personnel that they were probably hacker friends of the Gunmen’s. A final group was a complete mix of races, genders, and ages. Skinner hadn’t been able to figure out who these people were until the other of Scully’s brothers - this one dressed in a standard black suit - had explained that they were a mixture of both Mulder and Scully’s neighbors, gym buddies, and church friends. Altogether more than a hundred people stood on the shore as Skinner turned back to the boat. Mulder had believed he was alone in the world, that everyone who cared about him except for Scully was gone. He hoped that Mulder could see the gathering there that morning, it was one of the only times Mulder had ever been wrong about anything. The man on the boat had lifted the final urn from the box, a slightly larger one than the others.

“Dana Scully and Fox Mulder,” his voice crackled over the radio. “Their families requested that they be joined together in death as completely as they were in life.” He began to pour the combined ashes into the water and Skinner heard Mrs. Scully break down completely beside him. He didn’t turn to her, finding himself unable to watch. Instead, he watched until the last of the ashes had been poured into the ocean. and the man had returned the urn to the box and begun sorting out the boat for her return to shore.

“Mom?” a man’s voice asked, it was the brother in the suit, “do you want me to go first?” Skinner saw her nod and the young man walked forward to where a small collection of smooth white stones had been piled together overlooking the ocean. A candle had been placed in a sheltered cave created by the stones. The young man knelt before the memorial structure and lit the candle. “I’ll miss you, sis,” the man said. From his pocket, he withdrew a smooth white stone about the size of a silver dollar. He placed it on the ground near the sculpture and stood back. Mrs. Scully and the other brother stepped forward next and each of them placed a similar stone beside the first. Without needing to be told, each person present for the memorial gradually made their way to the structure and placed their own white stone, creating piles and filling in crevices. Skinner stood and watched them all until no one else stepped forward. Everyone was making their way back to the road and their parked cars, Scully’s mother and her close family were away down the shore talking quietly amongst themselves. Skinner made his way forward and reached into his pocket, feeling the smooth stone that had sat there since he had been handed it during the church service. He bent down and placed it close to the candle amongst a group of others.

“I’m sorry agents,” he muttered, “my life will be a whole lot less interesting now.” 

He stood back up and watched the boat pull away, making its way back down the shore to the harbor. He took a few steps back and looked back down at the memorial. Light glinted from somewhere in the pile of stones. Skinner frowned and stepped a little closer. The light split into two, dazzling him with its brightness. He blinked and strode back to the sculpture. The two pinpricks of light vanished as he did. He bent down to examine the spot where he had seen them. There was nothing there for any light to reflect off, just another rock. 

“Spooky,” he muttered to himself. 

Skinner stood back up again and made his way slowly down the wet grass to his car. He climbed into the driver’s seat. The pinpricks of light glinted from the structure again, far too bright considering how far away they were now. Skinner smiled and started the engine, pulling away from the curb. He wasn’t entirely sure what the lights were but he knew in his heart what they meant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
